


When Worlds Collide

by GrumpyGhostOwl



Category: Battle of the Planets
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, F/M, Things-fall-down-go-"Boom!"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-04
Updated: 2016-04-04
Packaged: 2018-05-31 03:59:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6454795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrumpyGhostOwl/pseuds/GrumpyGhostOwl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When it seems that Mark and Princess can't get themselves sorted out, someone mysterious calls in help of an otherworldly nature.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written a very long time ago, back in the days of dial-up internet! I can't remember exactly when it was but it would have been some time before 2004. It was first posted on gatchfanfic.com.
> 
> No animals – incorporeal or otherwise – were harmed in the writing of this story.  
>   
> Copyright to the song, 'Skinwalker' from Robbie Robertson's 'Music For The Native Americans' is owned by No Tomatoe Music and Medicine Hat Music.
> 
> Many thanks to Shayron, Kat, Sal, Terri-Anne and Dei for their help in beta reading and for encouragement on-line in the Gatchaman Talker.

_"To a shaman it is readily apparent that many Westerners have guardian spirits… It is tragic, from the point of view of such a shaman, that even those power-full people are nonetheless ignorant of the source of their power_.”

\- Michael Harner, _The Way of the Shaman_.

 

##  **Part I**

 

_She broke down, on a highway_   
_Miles from nowhere, it had no number_   
_She was lost, a long way from home_

_\- Skinwalker (_ Robbie Robertson and the Red Road Ensemble _, Music for the Native Americans)_

 

_Swan extended her graceful neck and stretched pure white wings. She uttered a soft, mournful honk as she regarded the solitary sleeping form of the young woman whose unseen totem and constant companion she was. Princess tossed in her sleep, restless, murmured a name… "Mark..."_

_Swan shook her head, pointed her beak skyward, and called. Through the ceiling plummeted a white eagle with eyes of turquoise fire, talons outstretched, wings angled for landing, primary flight feathers fully splayed._

_"I need to talk to you," Swan said as Eagle settled at the foot of the bed._

_"I know, and I'm not having any more luck than you are, Swan," the raptor pointed out. "That boy just doesn't know what's good for him... I mean, we barely averted disaster with that hussy Amanda!"_

_"I know, dear," Swan shook her tail feathers delicately and waddled across the rug on thick webbed feet, "but the real reason I called is that someone is sending Help."_

_Eagle regarded Swan first out of one eye, then out of the other, tilting his head on one side._

_"What sort of help? You're not thinking of calling on the Grizzly Bear of the West again, are you? The last time we did that, all that happened was that Mark felt the urge to see a naturopath! Ginko biloba is not exactly what we need, here."_

_"I've already apologised over the Bear incident," Swan sniffed. "Bear is the Animal of the Heart, but I don't think it's Mark's heart that's the problem. I think it's his head… And so does whoever called in our Help."_

_"I could have told you that," Eagle grumbled. "That boy needs a good swift kick up the -- oh, no. You didn't."_

_Swan gave Eagle a meaningful look._

_"Mark spends too much time in his head," she said. "The best way to get him out of it may well be to stand him on it."_

_Eagle drew back his head, beak slightly agape, crest feathers quivering._

_"You're not bringing in one of the Tricksters!"_

_"I'm not bringing in anyone." Swan met Eagle's blue gaze unflinchingly. "I told you. This came from Upstairs."_

_"They're sending Raven?" Eagle inferred, hoping that this was as bad as it got._

_"Bigger than that," Swan replied._

_Eagle shuddered._

_"You mean…"_

_"Yes."_

_"Coyote Medicine! By the Grandfathers! Coyote's nothing but trouble on four legs!" Eagle paced restlessly up and down along the foot of the bed, scimitar-curved talons clattering on the floorboards. "We could be letting ourselves in for some serious trickster shit, here!"_

_"Nonetheless," Swan declared, "I think we should cooperate. How else are we going to get through to Mark and Princess?"_

_"It's a drastic measure," the Eagle said, "but in this case… well, not that we have a choice." He clicked his beak nervously. "I just hope we can handle the fallout. Tell me: who invoked Coyote?"_

_"They didn't say. The word came down from Above, that's all I know."_

_"Holy heyoke!" Eagle moaned._

 

 

"Brrrrip-pip-pip! Cold!" Keyop grumbled, rubbing his hands along his skinny forearms and jumping up and down on the spot in the shimmering puddle of light underneath the big cinema sign.

"Here," Princess said, and slipped out of her leather jacket, draping it around the boy's shoulders. "Is that better?"

"Drrrrrrrrooot-toot! Warmer!" Keyop grinned, sticking his arms through the sleeves and giggling as the ends flopped over his outstretched hands. He glanced up at his foster-sister and sobered. "What... doot-toot! About... you?"

"I'm okay, Keyop," Princess assured him, although the gooseflesh on her arms suggested otherwise.

It was a clear autumn night, the nearly-full moon hung high over the skyscrapers of Center City, the stars mostly obscured by the lights, and the air was dense and sharp and laden with exhaust smells and engine smells and air conditioner smells and restaurant smells and tobacco smells and people smells and that busy-city smell that comes with the air having been inhaled and exhaled so many times.

And Princess and Keyop were waiting.

Princess glanced up at the clock tower across the street. Eight twenty. The movie was scheduled to start at eight thirty. Mark had arranged to meet them at seven thirty for pre-movie space burgers.

"Grrrrrrrrreeeeet-peep! Late!" Keyop chirped, frowning.

"Yes." Princess agreed, without commenting.

Shadows jigged and played under the dancing light bulbs, and Princess sighed, watching a young couple strolling by, their arms linked, hands clasped together, the diamond on the woman's left hand catching the light like a star.

"Arrrrrooot! Might have... doo-toot... to go in... without him," Keyop speculated, frowning.

"Just another five minutes," Princess murmured, and Keyop frowned.

Princess opened her mouth to say that another five minutes wouldn't mean they'd have to miss the movie, when she realised that Keyop wasn't frowning at her, but past her. He was glaring, in fact, with an expression that would have done Jason proud.

She turned to see Mark approaching.

With a woman.

A young woman.

A young, attractive, blonde woman.

"Grrrripp-pip!" Keyop snarled by way of greeting. "Late! Missing... trailers!"

"I am?" Mark blinked. "Sorry, I met up with Amber and we got to talking." His gaze swept over Keyop and Princess, failing to notice that his reception was colder than the night wind. "This is Amber," he said, gesturing towards his willowy companion. "We were classmates at Space Academy. Amber, these are my friends, Keyop and Princess."

"Nice to meet you," Amber said, smiling warmly.

"Likewise," Princess mumbled, and shook the proffered hand.

"Amber's made Captain in her Galaxy Patrol Squadron," Mark said. "Why don't we skip the movie and go for dinner, somewhere, the four of us?"

"Doot-toot! Can't!" Keyop protested. "Have to see... prrrip! Movie... for school!"

"Oh." Mark thrust his hands in his pockets. "Can't we go to another session?"

"There isn't another session," Princess said gently. "This is a special screening of _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead_ (1). Keyop has to review it for his Literature class." She swallowed. "You and Amber go on, Mark. We'll catch up with you some time."

Keyop positioned himself neatly between Mark and Princess and began herding Princess towards the box office.

"Brrrrrit-pip! Party pooper!" he shot back over his shoulder.

Princess swallowed again, but the lump in her throat was staying firmly put. Numbly, she paid for two tickets and allowed Keyop to lead her through the lobby.

"S-stood up!" Keyop grumbled. "Jerk!"

"Don't be like that, Keyop," Princess murmured. "After all, it isn't every day you meet up with an old friend."

Keyop's only reply was to glower and pout.

They crept into the darkened cinema and found their seats as Tim Roth and Gary Oldman tossed the coin that always came up heads.

A few moments later, someone sat next to Princess.

"Hi," Mark said.

"Shhhhhhhhhh!" said the man in the row behind.

"So what's this movie about?" Mark whispered.

"Where's Amber?" Princess asked, _sotto voce_.

"She had to go," Mark replied. "What's happening, now?"

"Shhhhhhhhhhh!" Keyop hissed.

Richard Dreyfuss introduced the Travelling Players, and Mark couldn't help himself.

"Which one's Rosencrantz, and which one's Guildenstern?"

"Shhhhhhhhhhhh!"

Princess hunched down low in her seat in the futile hope that the ground would open up and swallow her.

One hundred and ten minutes later, the three emerged, along with the other patrons, into the garish light of the lobby.

"So, what was that?" Mark wanted to know.

"Arrrrroot-toot! Existentialist... drrrrit! Absurdism," Keyop explained.

"Exit-what?"

"Existentialism," Princess repeated. "The concept that the Universe is governed only by chaos, that there is no God, no rhyme, no reason and that all Creation is one huge cosmic joke."

"That doesn't make a lot of sense," Mark commented.

"Brrrrrrrooot!" Keyop rolled his eyes. "Not supposed to!"

"Oh..." Mark's academic forte had always been math. "Um... Do you two want to go for pizza or something?"

"It's late," Princess said before Keyop could answer in the affirmative.

"Awwwwwwwwww," Keyop clutched at Princess' hand. "Drrrrooot-toot! Tomorrow... Saturday. No school!"

"I have a dentist's appointment first thing," Princess reminded the boy.

"Your appointment can't be that early," Mark reasoned, "and besides, it's only the dentist. You can cancel and make another one."

Princess sighed in defeat.

"Just don't order anything with anchovies on it, okay?"

 

 

"Keyop?" Princess called, putting down the telephone and ascending the stairs with her dry cleaning draped over one arm (fortunately, the cleaner had been able to get the anchovy stain out), "are you on line?"

"Drrrrrooot-toot! Doing... homework!" Keyop chirped.

"On a Saturday?" Princess wondered aloud. Keyop's door was half open, and Princess could see the boy at his mess of a desk, a book open before him, chewed pencil stub in hand, the computer screen alight with a dark-hued internet page. "How's it going?" Princess ventured.

Brrittttt-pip! Cool," Keyop replied, half-turning in his chair and grinning at his big sister. "See! Doot-toot! Way out stuff! Look." He gestured at the screen. He hit the "back" command and surfed through to a page called _Coyote Medicine_.

"What kind of homework is this?" Princess wanted to know.

"English," Keyop announced. "Prrrrrip-pip! Studying mythology... and -- toot -- folklore. Thought it would be... boring, brrrrooot! But this.... neat! There are.... prrrip! Still shamans around. Talk to animals!"

"Maybe they _think_ they can," Princess said gently. "It's just superstition."

"Prrrroot-toot! Real!" Keyop pouted. "Anyway...cool stories. This one... about Coyote. Brrrip-pip! Coyote... A trickster! Shows us... toot-toot... how to laugh.... at ourselves." The boy sighed. "Drrrrrrr.... can we.... pippip... get Mark.... a coyote?"

"Keyop..." Princess folded her arms.

Keyop grinned, and tilted his head on one side, not unlike the Swallow whose likeness he adopted.

"How was... prrrrip-pip! Dentist?"

"Nothing major," Princess recounted. "Just a clean and scale. If you ate less candy and brushed your teeth properly, you wouldn't mind visiting the dentist, either."

"Jacket?" Keyop changed the subject, and gestured towards the article of clothing over Princess' arm.

"The stain came out okay," she said.

"Sorry," Keyop apologised, and hung his head.

"That's okay," Princess said. "You didn't mean to stick the sleeve in the pizza."

Princess put the jacket away in her closet, and returned to the cafe downstairs.

The only customer was Jason, brooding silently over his coffee.

"Hey," Jason saluted Princess with his cup. "Mark couldn't wait," he told her. "Said he was taking an old friend flying."

"Oh," Princess said.

"Hey," Jason said again.

"Yes?"

"You look tired."

"We were out a little late last night," Princess told him.

"Yeah, Keyop and I had a little talk while you were out... About how Mark kept you waiting for an hour and then turned up with a blonde."

"You make it sound awful," Princess chided as she opened the door on Jill's newly-acquired dishwasher and began to load dishes on the racks.

"Keyop told me the jerk didn't even apologise."

"I don't remember," Princess evaded, rattling the cutlery in the holder.

"Right." Jason finished his coffee, and Princess found herself shifting uncomfortably under his gaze. "So, you're not in the least bit angry."

"Do I have reason to be?"

"You tell me."

"Jason..." Princess closed the door on the dishwasher and considered the imposing array of knobs and dials on the control panel.

"Look," Jason got up and joined Princess behind the counter. He reopened the door on the machine, added the powdered detergent and closed the door again, "I just notice that... well... just lately, you seem a little down."

"I do?" Princess frowned.

"You do," Jason affirmed, and selected the "economy" cycle with the quick twist of a dial.

"Oh..."

The machine started, and Jason had to raise his voice slightly to be heard over the industrial-strength rumble.

"You want to tell me what's going on?"

"There's nothing going on, Jase." Princess walked back around the counter and perched on a stool.

"Try again," Jason suggested, following her course and taking the stool next to her. "Or is that the problem? There's nothing going on, and you'd prefer it if there was?"

Princess shook her head, making a pretence of turning a coaster around in little circles on the countertop.

"I can't... I can't do anything about it."

"Why not?"

"Because… I'm just being foolish. There's nothing to be angry about."

Jason appropriated the coaster.

"You never take any shit from Spectra's goons," he pointed out.

"That's different."

"Is it? Who hurts you the more? Zoltar or Mark?"

Princess went very still. Her throat moved convulsively, and she closed her eyes against the tears that welled.

"Hey," Jason said gently, a hand on her shoulder, "I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Princess assured him, sniffing and tossing her head.

Jason proffered a tissue and she dabbed at her eyes.

"Princess?" Keyop called out from the landing.

He skipped lightly down the stairs, and his expression shifted to a glower as he took in Princess' pale and blotchy face.

"I'm okay, Keyop," Princess assured him.

"Drrrrrip-boop! Don't look... okay!" Keyop opined, giving Jason the kind of look that Jason normally reserved for Spectrans of command rank or above.

"I said something dumb about Mark," Jason confessed.

Keyop folded his arms and expressed his contempt with a small snort.

Princess found another tissue and blew her nose.

"What's up, Keyop?" she asked.

"Prrrrrrooot-toot... need help," he said, "with... homework."

Jason grinned.

"Five-dimensional calculus again?" he asked.

"English... drrrrrooop! Assignment," Keyop corrected.

"Pass on that one," Jason opted.

"What's the problem?" Princess urged gently.

"Brrrrooot-toot! Spelling... 'skinwalker.'"

"What?"

"Skinwalker," Keyop repeated, with an effort. "Book... has it... toot... one word... Spell checker says... should be... t-t-two."

"A skin... walker?" Princess asked. "It sounds horrible."

"Drrrrrrrittititit -- Navajo myth," Keyop explained. "Skinwalker... take you over... spirit kind of thing."

"Sounds like one creepy assignment, Keyop. Go with what the book says."

"Okay."

 

 

Zark sounded the alert shortly after sunset. A Spectran ship was attacking over Arizona, and G-Force scrambled to intercept.

Zoltar had outdone himself, this time: it wasn't just one ship, it was a squadron of ships like something out of the old tales of the Wild Hunt: a pack of uncanny hounds which bayed and howled with modulated ultrasonic and electromagnetic pulses. It wasn't all for show. The signals emitted by the hell hounds played merry havoc with the power and communications of anything unfortunate enough to be within range.

The outmatched fighters of the the UN Defence Forces were firing largely useless guns and doing their best to keep from falling out of the sky.

The _Phoenix_ closed in, and Princess struggled to make sense of the wildly fluctuating readings, translating the chaotic input from the sensors into coherent status reports as the hounds loomed larger and larger in their sights.

The pack seemed to close in on itself, then the individual hounds began to form linkages with one another, segments sliding and locking into place to form a single, giant hellhound that turned a hellish head with gaping jaws toward the _Phoenix._

"Don't they say that pets look like their owners?" Tiny attempted to cover the sinking feeling in his stomach with humour.

"Nice doggie," Jason muttered, his finger hovering over the missile launch control.

The targeting system was flashing red, locked on and ready to deliver a big stick.

"Not yet," Mark told his second tersely.

Princess opened her mouth to ask why, then shut it again. As far as she could tell, they were out in the middle of nowhere and if they hit the Spectran ship, there was no danger of it crashing into any collateral target. If Jason missed, the stray missile might take out a few cacti and scare the local rattlers, so why not fire? Where was the sense in offering Zoltar the first punch? Was this some kind of chivalry? Princess mentally bit her tongue and reminded herself that Mark was the leader: Mark knew best.

The alien behemoth turned glowing red eyes on the _Phoenix_ and howled.

Princess shrieked as pain lanced through her head, and her console shrieked with her. She saw the readings go wild and coughed at the acrid smell of burning circuitry emanating from the avionics panels. Beside her, Keyop clutched at his helmet and cried out.

Tiny's teeth were clenched hard enough to hurt as he fought the protesting ship, which kept wanting to drop a wing and spin. The engines surged, Jason was doubled over, Mark likewise, face contorted in protest.

The targeting screen flickered. Jason glared at it. Missile lock was still there, and they'd lose it any second.

His hand shot to the control, made contact, depressed the switch.

_Oh, God, what if the missile firing mechanism is shot_? Jason's thought followed the warhead as it blasted free of the ship. _I could have just killed us all_!

The radar altimeter showed a height of five thousand eight hundred feet, rate of descent one thousand three hundred feet per minute.

The bird missile streaked across the sky, leaving a brilliant white contrail in the moist night desert air.

And struck.

And the pain stopped.

And Tiny was able to activate the backup hydraulics, level the wings and bring the nose back up as the fuel flow evened out and the Phoenix eased into a glide, waiting for the turbines to catch up.

The engines roared and Tiny put his baby back into a max-rate climb.

The Spectran ship, however, was far from destroyed. As the bird missile found its target, it was forced to reconfigure, its weaponry temporarily off line, and now a pack of hounds closed on the Phoenix as though it were a fleeing fox, harrying and worrying as the wounded war ship fought to regain altitude.

The ships attached themselves to the dorsal surface, weighing the _Phoenix_ down, then to the wings, each machine disrupting the airflow a little more, a little more, one after the other over the smooth lifting surfaces.

And the _Phoenix_ , with only six and a half thousand feet on the clock, went into aerodynamic stall, her wings no longer able to generate the lift needed to keep the warship in the air.

The _Phoenix_ was built for speed and manoeuvrability in battle, not maximum stability. The nose pitched up, and any residual lift that may have been generated by the fuselage was lost. The tailplane, far too small for effective stall recovery in something the size of the G-Force warship, was suddenly about as much use as a paper lunch sack in a gale.

Mark's stomach sank with the ship as she plummeted out of the sky.

"Tiny!" Mark stared at the wildly fluctuating readings on the main console. "Can we go to _Fiery Phoenix_?"

"I'm way ahead of you, Commander!" Tiny assured him, already in the process of firewalling the levers.

Zoltar's hounds of hell began to fall away even as the surface temperature of the Phoenix began to rise. With seconds to spare, Zoltar released the locks on his own craft and sped away, knowing all too well what was to come.

The _Phoenix_ seemed to writhe as it transformed and took on the shape of the its namesake, the legendary firebird, its plasma exosurface vapourising the remaining ships that clung to its surface.

Desert sand turned to glass in the intense heat as the warship skimmed the ground and arced back into the air with terrible, flaming grace.

On the bridge, the occupants suffered, until Tiny pulled back on the control lever and the environmental system kicked in again and the deck cooled to tolerable levels once more.

Outside, in the night sky, the remaining Spectran mecha rejoined and limped away in a modified modular configuration with several of the remote-controlled UN jets in pursuit.

Mark regained his feet, only to be nearly thrown off them again as the _Phoenix_ slewed violently to port.

A red warning light flashed and a buzzer sounded with a flat, ominous sound.

"Flame out in number one," Tiny announced, his big hands flying over the controls to shut off fuel cocks and ease the turbines off line. His feet found balance in the rudder pedals, right leg extended to the full, starboard engines throttled back, number two powered up to compensate. Abruptly, all the consoles went red. "Flame out in number three," Tiny said, and worked to readjust his settings.

"We just lost avionics," Princess informed them coolly. "Switching to backup systems." She scanned the consoles. "Weapons systems inoperative. Emergency systems only on line."

"We're losing power," Tiny said grimly. "Initiating precautionary search and landing procedure."

Princess keyed a sequence.

"Activating encrypted emergency positioning indicator beacon," she reported. "Automatic coded distress signal away."

"E-PIRB confirmed active," Jason replied, following procedure. "Coded distress signal transmission confirmed."

"Going down," Tiny declared. "Ground floor: sand, cactus and jack rabbits."

"Please fasten your seat-belts and return your tray tables to the upright position," Jason quipped.

Tiny trimmed the _Phoenix_ up to glide. At least he still had the hydraulics. And they were over the Arizona desert, which meant there was plenty of space to land, and it was a full moon, so he could see the ground. That was good. It was always comforting to be able to see what he was landing on. And, hey… not only ground but a sealed road well within gliding distance. Even if his remaining three engines quit altogether – touch wood – he was still sitting pretty… He picked his thousand-foot reference point, eased the big ship in, ran through his checks and selected landing gear down.

"Uh-oh," he muttered.

"What is it?" Mark asked, then saw the three red lights and his jaw tightened. "I'll try the manual override."

"Any luck?" Tiny asked after a moment.

"No joy," Mark replied. "Brace yourselves, everyone, we're going in wheels-up."

"I'm going in wheels-up," Tiny said, emphasizing the pronoun. "You'd better get the G-1 out. Keyop, too, with G-4. If anything goes wrong, we need to minimise the damage. You've got about two and a half minutes."

"You're right," Mark agreed. "I'll see you on the ground, Tiny. Keyop," he called over his shoulder, "move it!"

Princess's fingers flew over her console, and she nodded to her brother.

"Readings on our vehicles are all in the green. The pod shielding seems to have held. Go on, Keyop," she urged, and after less than a second's hesitation, Keyop ran for the hatch that would take him to the G-4.

The _Phoenix_ bucked and protested as the G-1 flew clear, and Tiny re-trimmed. He trimmed again as the G-4 moved away.

"You should have gone with Keyop, Princess," Jason said, trying the manual override for the landing gear yet again.

Princess simply shook her head.

At one thousand feet, Tiny brought the engines back to idle and commenced a slow, curving glide to his selected touch-down point, deliberately weaving a little to wash off the extra speed they'd gained by not dirtying up their profile with the landing gear.

With the skill of a maestro, Tiny flew the big red and blue warship onto the ground. There was a scrape as long grasses brushed the underside of the hull, the air speed dropped, the wings stalled, and the _Phoenix_ skidded and bumped her way to an ignominious halt in the sand, He made sure to leave her with her starboard wing down slightly, so that Princess would be able to get the G-3 out of the port pod.

"Is everyone okay?" Mark's voice sounded over the team's communicators.

"We're as well as can be expected, Commander," Tiny replied.

"Arrrrroot-toot! Hunky... dory!" Keyop piped. "Got... arrrrip-tip... company!"

" _G-Force, this is Patrol Unit Three, Goshawk Squadron. You look like you could use a hand,_ " said a female voice over the radio.

"Affirmative," Mark replied. "What's the word on the alien ship?"

" _We sent three of the remotes after it to track it back to base, but it knocked them out of the sky and disappeared, Commander,_ " the Squadron Leader said.

"Understood," Mark said.

" _We have enough fuel to provide air cover for you until help arrives. We'll be overflying at nine thousand if you need us._ "

"Thanks, Goshawk Leader. Out."

 

 

Tiny left the auxiliary power unit running after shutting down the main engines, and released the two remaining vehicles from their bays. Moments later, the G-1 rolled to a stop on the highway parallel to their makeshift landing strip, followed by the G-4.

The team gathered again on the bridge of the Phoenix, where Princess was working on some of the avionics wiring under her console.

"Did you transmit our position to Center Neptune?" Mark wanted to know, addressing Princess' cape.

"As per – " her head under the console, Princess bit her tongue. "Yes," she said. _As per standard procedure, Commander... Weren't you listening when we went through our checks_?

"Can you raise Chief Anderson?"

"Our communications systems appear to have been damaged by the Spectran wave bombardment," Princess' voice drifted up from underneath the bench. "I'm working on it."

There was a brief flash of light from the communications screens, a flicker, a crackle and a hiss. A snapping sound and a wisp of smoke came from the access space where Princess was working.

"Any luck?" Mark asked.

"Are you okay?" Jason added.

"Yes." Princess edged out of the crawl space, batted a bit of soot from her visor, and made a final adjustment. The screens sprang to life, revealing Chief Anderson's image.

" _—nix_ , come in… Ah. There you are." Relief was patent in Anderson's voice. "You're all unharmed?" he asked.

"Yes, Chief," Mark replied. "The Spectra ship was hit, but not destroyed – " he ignored Jason's glare -- "and we sustained enough damage that we had to land the _Phoenix_. Our landing gear is out of commission, so we can't take off again. There's a UN Patrol Squadron providing cover until we can get airborne again."

"I have a recovery team already on its way. Head south on the highway to the rendezvous point, here –" a map flashed on to the screen – "and you'll be taken back to Center Neptune while the engineering crew carries out running repairs on the _Phoenix_."

"I'm not leaving the ship," Tiny declared. "I'll wait here for the engineers."

"Understood." Anderson acknowledged the big pilot. "The rest of you report back to base as soon as possible."

"Big ten!" they replied.

 

 

The G-1 screamed down the empty highway and soared skyward, vanishing into the blackness, the afterburners leaving a red ghost image on Princess' retinas. The G-4 followed, far more slowly, while the G-2 rolled smoothly onto the road and accelerated away. Tiny helped Princess wrestle the Galacticycle off its ramp and into the soft sand.

"It's too heavy to ride through this," Princess observed, "and much too heavy to push." She switched back to civilian mode. "I think I can manage it this way," she decided.

"You sure?" Tiny asked, concerned.

"Yes, but what about you? Are you sure you don't want me to stay and help you?"

"I'll be okay, don't you worry. Besides, I've got our air cover upstairs for company. You go on, and I'll see you back at the base."

"All right, Tiny. Thanks."

Princess manhandled the motorcycle through the sand and the dry, spiky tufts of grass on to the highway. The red tail-lights of the G-2 had long vanished in the distance. Fifty yards away, the _Phoenix_ loomed in the darkness, a hulking shadow going quiet as the APU wound down to idle, delivering just enough power to keep the bridge comfortable for its lone occupant.

Astride the motorcycle, Princess started the motor and switched on the lights. She settled, put the machine into gear and took off.

As her bike ran straight and sweet along the tarmac, Princess allowed herself to relax into the sensation of speed and expanded her focus to take in her surroundings: overhead, the sky was black velvet studded with countless jewels, so much bigger and brighter out here than in the city; the landscape was dark, mysterious shapes, rocks, mesas, hills and cacti, Joshua trees and yucca lilies, spinifex and telegraph poles, all casting strange, pale shadows under the huge silver white globe of the full moon.

The air was cool and clean-smelling. Princess blinked, and shook her head. She had no idea what time it was, only that she had been up too long, was tired, and wished she was back home in bed.

The wind made her eyes water, and she blinked again, then her heart leaped in her chest and she hit the brakes and swerved to avoid the animal that ran on to the road.

The bike skidded, tyres shrieking as Princess used her body weight to keep the machine from toppling. Arcing around through just over a hundred and eighty degrees, Princess' foot touched the road surface as motorcycle and rider came to a shaking, sweating stop, the bike's engine idling smoothly as though nothing untoward had occurred.

The coyote, which had stopped on the tarmac and stood motionless, bathed in moonlight, looked at Princess, grinned --

\-- and vanished.

Princess tried to gasp, and couldn't.

Hands flexing against the grips on the handlebars, she managed a deep, shuddering intake of breath, and let it out again, trembling from the adrenaline rush.

_I saw an animal_ , she told herself, _I nearly hit it_.

But there was nothing where the coyote had been.

_Camouflage_ , Princess decided. _The darn thing's probably laughing at me from behind a bush_...

She straightened the bike out, pointed it in the right direction and resumed her journey. As she rode, her heart rate slowed again, and the wind, chilling her at first, dried out the perspiration on her face and neck. The dry, prickly feeling at the back of her tongue subsided, and Princess increased her speed.

Weird, yelping laughter sounded as though it was coming from all around and inside her head.

Princess braked again, coming to a more controlled stop than last time, and listened.

The last notes of the coyote's song faded away, and moonlight glinted off yellow eyes as the grey, slinking shape trotted out onto the road.

It chuckled at the young woman on the motorcycle, grinning widely.

And winked out like a candle flame.

Princess made a small, involuntary sound in the back of her throat.

_Am I losing my mind_? she wondered. She raised her wrist to call Jason to come back and drive with her, then let her arm fall back to her side.

Jason would think she was crazy.

Hell, _she_ thought she was crazy... No, not crazy, just overtired and overworked and overstressed and... It was late, it was dark and the light was playing tricks.

Princess deliberately revved the bike's engine, the sound and the reassuring vibration reminding her that this was real, this was solid, and all else was simply tricks of the light.

"It's all done with mirrors," said the coyote, sitting on its haunches a mere two feet to her left, and she twisted in her seat to gape at the creature, which chuckled again, and then loped away into the mesquite.

"This is _not_ happening," Princess told herself aloud, gripped the handlebars for dear life, and sped away, heart pounding against her ribs.

She let the sound of the engine fill her ears, let the feel of the suspension carry her senses, looked only at the road and her rear view mirror, refused to think about anything other than getting to the rendezvous point and sanity.

Her nerves were frayed, that was all. She was tired, and it had been a difficult mission...

Ah, yes: the mission... why hadn't Mark let Jason fire that missile? _It would have been an easy shot... Jason could have hit it with his eyes closed. Okay, the Spectran ship would still have reconfigured, and we'd still have wound up tackling the individual units, but it would have been without the initial damage we incurred when they hit us with that wave bombardment, and Tiny would have had more altitude to spare. We might have been home by now! Oh... if, maybe, might-have-been… why are there so many ifs and maybes and might-have-beens in my life?_

As if to add insult to injury, the motorcycle engine coughed, surged, and died. The headlight and tail-lights faded, and the vehicle rolled to a halt.

Princess propped one foot on the ground, exasperated and bemused.

All was silent.

Then a coyote howled.

The high, eerie ululation made Princess shiver.

It was then that one of the unidentifiable shapes by the side of the road seemed to come to life.

It rose up out of the rocks and moved toward the motorcycle and its nerve-wracked rider. It was roughly human-shaped, roughly human-sized…

It was an old Native American woman.

Or at least, she seemed old... but then she seemed terribly young... but it was dark, and the moonlight was playing tricks, and she could have been twenty, or thirty, or a hundred.

She wore white buckskins, fringed and decorated with bead and quillwork, with a blanket draped around her shoulders for warmth in the cold desert night. Her long hair bore streaks of grey, and had the loose crimped look of combed-out braids. Two dark feathers hung down from above her right ear. Her fine-boned face gave the impression of both age and beauty, and her eyes… her eyes were amber flecked with gold.

"I… I seem to have broken down," Princess said, for want of anything better to say.

"Yes, you do," the woman agreed, as though she met people on highways like this every day of the week.

The strange woman paced a circle sunwise around the motorcycle and its rider, almost as though measuring the both of them.

Then she walked away.

"Hey!" Princess dismounted and kicked down the stand on her bike. "Hey! Where are you going?"

She turned to follow, and found herself alone.

Movement caught her eye, and she saw the coyote trotting between clumps of spinifex grass.

Princess let her breath out in a frustrated puff of air and raised her wrist, speaking into her communicator.

"Jason? This is Princess, come in."

Silence, not even the hiss of static to indicate an open channel.

"Jase? Keyop?" She swallowed. "Mark?"

She tapped at the pressure-sensitive surface, and felt her heart sink when the panel failed to illuminate.

The rule in the event of radio failure is to transmit blind in the hope that even if you can't hear anyone, someone might hear you, so Princess took another breath.

"G-Force, this is G-3, transmitting my position. I'm broken down on the highway, en-route to the rendezvous. I'm going to attempt repairs but I don't know how long I'll be. I'll continue to transmit at intervals. Out."

Princess folded her arms and wished she had brought some kind of jacket. The desert wind was chilly, and raised gooseflesh on her arms.

Well, there was one way to deal with that, and it might fix the mechanical problem with the bike, too: straddling the seat, Princess checked to ensure that she had no audience.

"Trans--"

"It won't work, you know."

Princess started violently, and glared at the woman who stood looking over her shoulder.

"You again! Where did you go?"

"Now you're making assumptions," the strange woman said, wagging one finger, and disappeared like mist.

"I'm losing my mind," Princess whimpered.

"Want me to help you look for it?" asked the Coyote, grinning from where it was sitting at the side of the road.

"No, thank you," Princess said automatically, looked around again, and raised her arm. "TRANSMUTE!"

"Don't you just hate it when that happens?" the Coyote remarked cheerfully as the transmutation sequence failed to initiate, and Princess swallowed. "Or rather, don't you just hate it when that doesn't happen?"

Princess clenched her teeth, made a point of ignoring the Coyote, and shifted her weight.

"Transmute!" she tried again.

No light, no shimmering waves of energy, no surge of power through her cerebonic implant, no rush of strength, no uniform... nothing.

The Coyote began to chuckle.

It chuckled, and the chuckle became a giggle, and the giggle became a cackle and the cackle progressed to full-blown, howling, shrieking hysteria as the Coyote rolled on its back in convulsions of helpless mirth, paws waving, tail twitching, sides heaving, and all the time laughing, and laughing as though it would never stop.

"And just _what_ is so funny?" Princess demanded icily.

"Ah-hoo....hoo... ha... ho...hee-hee-hee-hee-hee oh, ha, hee, hoo... you are," the Coyote managed to say, its mad gales of laughter subsiding to a gasp and a wheeze and a spasmodic rise and fall of its scrawny ribs.

"I'm funny?" Princess echoed, folding her arms, tears springing hot and sharp in her eyes.

"Oh, now, don't be like that!" the Coyote sprang to its feet. "Oh, don't cry, Princess, please don't cry, I didn't mean to make you sad, truly I didn't!" the animal pleaded. It pattered around her in a circle, moving clockwise and gazing up at her out of imploring golden eyes. "I don't mean to do harm, I never do, you know, it's just that I'm a Trickster you see, the Cosmic Jester, a clown and a miscreant and a very naughty creature indeed, and sometimes.... well... sometimes... Sometimes, things don't go quite the way I plan." The animal smiled winningly and put its head one one side. "Forgive me?"

"I..." Princess shook her head. "I can't believe I'm having a conversation with... with a..."

"Coyote," said Coyote.

"With a coyote."

"Capital C," added Coyote. "It's Coyote, with a capital C. _The_ Coyote."

"Coyote..." Princess said, suddenly feeling terribly, bone-crushingly tired.

"You didn't answer my question," the animal wheedled.

"Huh?"

"Do you forgive me?"

"Oh..." Princess couldn't help but smile. "I forgive you."

"Hee!" Coyote grinned. "Good! Then we'll be friends!"

"If you say so." Princess dismounted from the bike again, and took off her communicator, turning it over in her hand, looking for obvious signs of damage. "I don't suppose you know if there's a phone box -- hey!"

She was alone in the desert night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**NOTES:**

  1. _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead_ was written by English playwright Tom Stoppard, with the movie version, starring Tim Roth and Gary Oldman in the title roles, and Richard Dreyfuss as the Player King, directed by the author. It's a play within a play within a play, being Stoppard's existentialist/absurdist take on Shakespeare's _Hamlet_ from the points of view of two of the minor characters -- almost fanfiction, if you like! Recommended viewing and a popular choice for study in high-school level English Literature.




	2. Part II

##  **Part II**

 

_Who am I? Who are you?_   
_I was only passing through._   
_Skinwalker, Skinwalker._

 - _Skinwalker_ (Robbie Robertson and the Red Road Ensemble, _Music for the Native Americans_ )

 

_"Boy, you two are ree-e-eally pushin' it, this time," Condor drawled, chuckling from his perch atop the hood of the G-2._

_The vehicle's driver was leaning against the door-frame, a mere eighteen inches from his invisible totem, completely oblivious to the conversation crackling through the aether all around him._

_"Look who's talking," Eagle snarled, glaring up at the ungainly scavenger, "the great matchmaker himself! Go find something dead and circle over it..."_

_"I am," shot back the Condor. "When Coyote's done with you, I'll be circlin' over what's left."_

_"Bite me," said Eagle, sulkily, and turned back towards the G-1._

_"You two must have really pissed off one of the Great Ones," Condor speculated. "But who would be desperate enough to invoke Coyote?"_

_Had Eagle possessed teeth, he would have ground them. As it was, the raptor merely clenched his beak._

_"I don't know. Shouldn't you be keeping an eye on Jason?" he suggested._

_"I am," Condor said, with a quick glance to his right. "Mark, however..."_

_" -- Is my responsibility," Eagle finished._

_"Don't get your tail feathers in a twist," Condor grumbled. "I'm not gonna step on your long and deadly toes, cousin. But I have a responsibility to make sure my human being doesn't get caught up in the fallout from you an' Swannie playin' with metaphysical fire. I mean... Coyote! Whoo!"_

_"Just play in your own backyard, baldy," Eagle snapped._

_"Oh, well aren't we just precious, then?" Condor jibed, and vanished._

_Eagle traipsed disconsolately after Mark, the tips of the young man's white mantles swishing clean through his incorporeal form without disturbing the spirit bird as he walked._

_Not that Eagle could have been much more disturbed than he already was._

_Coyote was loose, invoked by some mysterious force from Above, and magic was afoot._

 

 

Princess' fingers tightened over the seemingly useless communicator.

This had to be a bad dream.

"Do you _want_ this to be a dream, Princess?" asked a feminine voice, and Princess spun, ready to defend herself against whatever she might find.

It was the strange, young-old woman who had decamped so precipitously before, and she was standing almost toe to toe with her.

Princess took a step back and looked around for the Coyote, which was nowhere to be seen.

"Who are you?" Princess demanded.

"We've already been introduced," said the woman, and she smiled.

Princess blinked, suppressing a gasp. For a moment, the smile had been, not the smile of a human being, but the grin of an animal – white fangs gleaming, yellow eyes glowing in the night.

"How do you know my name?" Princess demanded.

"Because I do," the woman replied.

"Are you a Spectra spy?" Princess asked, lifting her chin defiantly, almost wishing the answer might be 'yes,' because then she would at least know what she was up against.

"Hardly," the woman chuckled. "Zoltar would have his work cut out, dealing with me."

"And you are...?" Princess prompted.

"I don't give my answers freely, G-3, and even when I do, they're never straight. If we tricksters gave straight answers, we wouldn't be tricksters, and you wouldn't learn what you need to learn the way you need to learn it, now, would you?"

"Who are you?" Princess breathed again, shivering now with cold, and more than cold.

"A friend," the woman said, and draped the blanket around Princess's shoulders.

It was soft, and warm, and smelled of herbs. Princess buried her face in the soft wool, breathing in the fragrance.

"Sage, sweetgrass, cedar and tobacco," she said dreamily. _What's sweetgrass_? she wondered idly, and forgot the question even as her mind articulated the thought.

"That's right," the woman soothed. "Just let go of all those annoying little thoughts and ideas."

The strange woman led Princess to the side of the road and the two of them sat down in the sand, moonlight pouring over them like water.

"What are you doing out here?" Princess asked, dreamily.

"Same as you," the woman parried. "We do what we came to do. And don't you wish that some people would acknowledge that we can actually do that?"

Princess pursed her lips.

"Mark." She let her breath out all at once. "He… he got on my nerves, tonight."

"Why do you let him?"

"Let him?"

"Do you tell him you're tired of being taken for granted? Do you ever speak out when you disagree? Do you ever tell him where he gets off?"

"Well, no…"

"What's this?" The strange woman held up a small object between the thumb and forefinger of one hand.

"It's a rock," Princess said flatly.

"If I throw it in the air, will it fly?"

"Course not," Princess replied.

The peculiar woman tossed the rock into the air, and it fell to the ground. Princess watched, bemused, as she picked the rock up and repeated the action, then again, again, again and again.

"What are you doing?" Princess asked, at last.

"What do you think I'm doing?"

"I think you're tossing a rock in the air and watching it fall on the ground, over and over again."

"Very good. Now, generalise."

"Generalise?"

"Be vague."

"I… Well, you're repeating an action… you're garnering empirical proof that gravity continues to apply to that rock, no matter how many times you throw it."

"You mean… I can keep throwing this thing in the air, and it will never fly away?"

"Well, yes! You keep following the same course of action, over and over, gravity isn't going to up and stop… oh." Princess pushed her hair back from her face. She smiled ruefully. "I'm the one tossing the rock, aren't I?"

"Yes, daughter," the woman said gently, "you have been tossing rocks in the air and expecting them to fly."

Tears burned in Princess's eyes again. So much anger, so much pain… never letting it show.

"Why do you do it?" the woman asked.

"Do what?"

"What you do. Trying to be somebody else's idea of how you ought to be: so quiet, so deferential... Is that who you really are, inside?"

"I… I don't know…" Princess stammered. "Maybe… maybe because other people think…"

"Other people? Was it your deference to Mark that got you into the most elite fighting force in the Federation?"

"No, of course not."

"Then is it your ability to bite your tongue and not speak up when you're pissed off that makes you such a good carer for Keyop...?"

"Well, no -- it's just the opposite, with him. "

"Then why are you so afraid to be who you are?" the woman's voice was soft, yet insistent.

"I don't... I don't want to lose him!"

"Lose Mark? Wouldn't you have to have him to lose him?"

"It's not like that!" Princess shook her head, tears blurring her vision. "I love him! He loves me! I know he does!"

"But...?"

"But... but he's right... there's a war on, and we're G-Force, and he's my commanding officer, and..."

The woman remained silent as Princess sobbed into her hands.

"He - he asked me to wait!" Princess hiccuped between sobs. "S-Sometimes... sometimes he says... little things that let me know... that he cares. Th-then... then other... other times, he acts like he doesn't care whether I live or die! Or worse... he t-treats me like I don't even know how to do my job! Why does he do this to me?"

"Does he?" the woman probed. "Or do you?"

Princess lifted her tear-streaked face and stared at her inquisitor. In silence, she accepted a tissue and blew her nose.

"Mark won't love me if I'm not perfect!" she wailed.

The strange woman's piercing amber gaze softened.

"And what, Princess, dear, is not perfect about you?" She smiled and cupped Princess's chin in one hand, and Princess abruptly felt, inexplicably, as though her entire being were cradled in a mother's arms. "Look at you: you're intelligent, educated, kind, compassionate, and very beautiful. You are the perfect you, how could you be otherwise?"

"Then why doesn't Mark want me? Why doesn't he see what you say you see in me?"

"Do you see it, little one?" the woman asked, folding her hands in her lap and regarding Princess solemnly.

"No," Princess admitted, averting her gaze, and dabbling furiously at the tears that continued to flow.

"Speaks for itself, doesn't it?"

"Am I dreaming this?" Princess wondered again, accepted another tissue, and continued blowing her nose.

"Am I a man, dreaming he is a butterfly, or a butterfly, dreaming he is a man?" the woman quoted. "Who's to say? Define truth. Define self. Define true self."

"What do you mean?"

"Who are you, Princess?"

"I'm me."

"Who is 'me'?"

"You know who I am."

"I know. Do you?"

"Now you're just playing games." Princess wrapped the blanket more closely around herself.

"Of course. It's what I do." The woman gazed up at the full moon, smiled at it as though it were an old friend, and howled.

Princess stared as the woman changed, her jaw lengthening, hair shortening and spreading to cover her entire head, ears fanning out, fingers shortening…

The Coyote grinned at Princess, yellow eyes glowing.

"Recognise me, now?" the creature said. "I am Coyote, a shape-shifter and a magician, a trickster, guide and teacher. I have been asked to help you. Will you accept my aid?"

"I never asked you to help me!" Princess exclaimed, scrambling to her feet. Her heel caught in the folds of the blanket and she sat down suddenly and gracelessly.

"Someone did," Coyote explained, "and here I am. What do you say?"

"What… sort of help?" Princess ventured, eyeing the strange animal off.

"Guidance, a little push here and there… the occasional whisper in your ear… the odd irresistible impulse… I can help you be who you are, little one, but I won't promise that it'll be easy."

The coyote moved closer, fangs gleaming in the moonlight.

"H-how?"

"Simply open your mind and let me in. Reach out, and let the power come."

Wide-eyed, Princess stretched out a hand, felt her fingers brush warm, soft fur that tingled against her skin.

With a rush of energy, the animal vanished, and Princess felt something hit her between the eyes as the world tilted in a flash of light and she crumpled into a heap in the woollen blanket.

For a long moment, she lay, barely conscious, aware of a world turned vivid. The desert vegetation glowed with layers of light, and an owl, arcing silently through the air, was a Technicolor comet against the sky. Her own outstretched hand was surrounded with rainbows.

She got to her feet, the blanket still warm about her shoulders, and lifted her face to the moon. Light poured down in a flood, like cool silk and fire, and Princess threw back her head and laughed aloud in pure delight.

It was then the she saw the Swan. It lifted its head and uttered a soft call.

"You're beautiful!" Princess breathed, bending down and reaching out to touch the snowy feathers.

"No more than you," replied the Swan. "I am your Totem, a guardian spirit. Call on me when you need me. I am never far away." And with that, not unlike the Cheshire Cat, the Swan faded from view.

Princess straightened, aware of every nuance in the landscape, entranced at the way the very sand sparkled. She was still Princess, still herself, and yet…

In the silence, Princess heard Coyote laugh. She smiled. It felt good.

There was still the matter of the rendezvous, and she was late. The auras she could see were charming, but distracting. With a mental fillip which she would hitherto never have guessed at, she shut down the enhanced perception, neatly folded the blanket, and returned to her bike, stowing the blanket and remounting. She transformed to birdstyle, started the engine first try, and sped away.

 

 

_"Well?" the white Eagle demanded, nervously flexing his talons. "How did it go?"_

_"Perfectly," Swan announced happily._

_"And so... so Coyote agreed... and Princess agreed...."_

_"Yes, and yes." Swan flipped her primary flight feathers into alignment over her back. "I think we can stop worrying, dear. The two of them seem to be getting along famously!"_

_"I don't know whether I'm relieved or terrified," Eagle said. "Both, I think. Anyway, I need to get back. Princess is behind schedule, and Mark's starting to fret... I tell you, Swannie, that boy is so dense, light bends around him!"_

_"Well... let's see what happens from here," Swan replied. "Things should start to get interesting around about now."_

 

 

"She's late." Mark's face darkened.

"Arrrrooot-toot! Princess... in trouble?" Keyop asked.

"I'll take the G-2 and meet up with her," Jason offered.

"No." Mark shook his head. "Give her another ten minutes. The transport'll be here, soon."

Even as the desert wind carried his words away, Mark heard the familiar sound of the Galacticycle's engine as it purred along the highway. He watched as the single headlight grew from a glimmering pinpoint of light to a halogen star, which dimmed as Princess brought her vehicle to a smooth stop next to the G-2 and shut her vehicle down.

Mark stood under the nacelle of the G-1, white wings swirling and lifting in the wind, his eyes meeting hers through the combined tints of blue and gold visors, and Princess let her gaze linger appreciatively for a moment.

_He's beautiful_ , she mused, taking in the lightly muscled form, the intense blue eyes. _Utterly gorgeous…_

He was walking toward her, now, his movements smooth, graceful, purposeful, and she remained where she was, leaning on the handlebars, drinking in the image of him.

"What happened?" Mark demanded crisply.

_Gorgeous and… such a pain in the ass._

"Engine trouble," Princess replied casually, without breaking eye contact. "Nothing I couldn't handle."

Mark blinked.

"Why didn't you call?" he demanded.

"I did. My communicator shorted," she said briskly. "Like I said: it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. I wasn't worried, but if you were, it wouldn't have taken much to set your mind at ease." She swung off the bike and leaned back against it, a pose almost Condor-esque.

"Uh..." Mark said, puzzled at the change he couldn't quite put his finger on.

"It's been a long day, Commander, and a long night, too." Princess brought her wrist down in a quick sweeping motion that returned her to civilian mode. "I'm tired." _And I'm inexplicably craving road-runner fricasee._

 

 

Security Chief Anderson took off his glasses, frowning, checked the lenses, breathed on them to mist them up, then cleaned them with his handkerchief before replacing them atop the bridge of his nose.

The image of Mark sitting in the visitor's chair directly opposite him moved back into focus.

"I've read the report. I've read all your reports," the Chief said.

"Didn't you find anything... unusual about this one?" Mark wanted to know, reaching over to tap the sheet of paper in question.

"It was a little more... frank than usual," Anderson hedged.

"Princess has been behaving strangely ever since the forced landing," Mark said, his countenance grim, his wrists resting on the desktop. "I started wondering if maybe Zoltar had sprung an impostor on us, but no impostor could know what went on aboard the _Phoenix_ during the mission. I even had Zark scan her handwriting, and he confirmed that it was Princess who wrote that report."

Anderson raised his eyebrows in response, and read the offending paragraph for the ninth time.

_"It is my considered opinion that the Commander made an error of judgement in not allowing G-2 to carry out his duty as the team's Gunnery Officer and fire the Bird Missile when G-2 felt it appropriate to do so. Had the missile been deployed at the time, damage to the Phoenix and the subsequent forced landing incident could have been avoided."_

"I admit it's unusual for Princess to question a decision of yours," Anderson said. "However, it's what she's been trained to do -- what all of you have been trained to do. What other examples of uncharacteristic behaviour have you noticed?" Anderson asked.

"Well... none, really, Chief," Mark replied. "I mean, after we got back to Center Neptune, she just said she was tired and went to her quarters. Then, this morning, at the debriefing... well... you heard her."

"Hmmmm..." Anderson carefully placed Princess' report in a manila folder and closed the cover. "I don't know that calling you, 'Angst Boy,' constitutes a personality shift," he said.

"But, Chief... she was gone a while out there alone in the desert! Anything could have happened."

Anderson arched an eyebrow, but kept his thoughts to himself. Aloud, he said, "Leave it with me. Don't worry about it, Mark. It's probably just stress."

"You sure, Chief?"

"Let's just wait and see," Anderson suggested, and put the folder away in a drawer, a signal that the interview was over.

 

 

"... and that was how Coyote stole Rabbit's big bushy tail, and to this day, all Rabbit has left on his backside is just a little ball of fluff!"

Keyop collapsed giggling into his bedclothes, dropping his pencil on the floor.

"Drrrrrooot-toot! Funny!"

Princess bent and picked up the writing implement, handing it back to its owner.

"You finish that homework, now," she said.

"Brrriiipp! Okay." Keyop put the pencil carefully on the notepad he'd been scratching in. "Where... doot-toot... you hear... story?"

"A friend told it to me," Princess recounted, with a smile. "Finish up, Tiny's going to be here any minute."

"Okay!" Keyop resumed his scribing. "...on... grrrrip-pip... his backside... is... just a little... ball..."

"I'll send Tiny upstairs when he arrives."

Leaving Keyop to his assignment, Princess made her way downstairs to where Jillian was serving the dinnertime crowd. Jason was ensconced in his favourite booth, tackling a large plate of _penne napolitana_ with a side of garlic bread, and Princess eased herself into the seat opposite.

"Hey," Jason greeted her, swallowing.

"Hey, yourself," she replied, picked up his napkin and wiped a speck of tomato sauce off his chin. "That looks good."

"It is. Try some." He speared a piece of pasta with his fork, ensured it was thoroughly coated in sauce and fed it to her, grinning. "You seem a lot less frazzled since you gave Mark that serve in the debriefing this morning," Jason recalled.

"Mmmmm..." Princess appropriated a piece of garlic bread. "I needed to vent," she explained.

"I can't believe you called him 'Angst Boy'," Jason chuckled. "Right to his face... Aw, man, I hope Zark was monitoring. I want him to make me a tape!"

Jillian arrived with Princess' chicken and a half bottle of merlot.

"Keyop not eating with you, tonight?" she asked.

"Tiny's taking him to that little place up on the coast for seafood," Princess said.

"Yech," Jason shuddered.

"You don't like seafood?" Jill asked.

"I'd rather," Jason replied vehemently, "eat brussels sprouts."

"I'll take that as a 'no'," Jill shrugged, and moved on to the next table.

The bell atop the door tinkled as Tiny entered, looked around and waved.

"Keyop's upstairs," Princess called, and the big pilot headed for the staircase.

The wine had been opened, and Princess poured two glasses.

"What are we celebrating?" Jason wanted to know, swirling the wine around in the glass and sniffing at it.

"Well... we're celebrating the fact that I'm not going to be anybody's doormat any more," Princess said, "and we're celebrating that the people from maintenance still haven't repaired the stove in your trailer, so you get to have dinner with your favourite sister."

"That's got to be worth drinking to," Jason declared, and raised his glass. "There's just one thing..."

"What's that?"

"You got to try my pasta. I get to taste that chicken."

Outside, Mark opened the door of his car to allow Amber to alight, and she did so with a smile. She had accepted his invitation to dinner with a qualm, having felt decidedly uncomfortable two days earlier, when his friends had given her the cold shoulder outside the movie theatre. Her feeling had been that she was intruding, the feeling that Mark had dragged her into a situation where she had no place, and so she had made an excuse and bade him return to his prior engagement.

Tonight would be different.

"You hang out here a lot?" she enquired, glancing up at the bright neon sign that proclaimed their destination as the "Snack J."

"Some of the time," Mark said, and pushed open the door, standing aside so Amber could precede him. "The others should be here, tonight. You'll remember Tiny, but I don't think you ever met Jason."

Amber walked into the brightly lit restaurant and looked around. It was clean, busy but not overly crowded, bustling but not oppressively noisy...

And there was a cold draught going right up her designer mini-skirt.

Amber turned in the direction of the breeze to see Mark standing motionless in the open doorway, his hand still on the door handle, staring into a corner of the room.

She followed his gaze to a booth, where two people were sharing a meal.

The auburn haired man had his back to her, so she couldn't see his face. The young woman looked familiar -- long raven-dark hair framing a pale, heart-shaped face, luminous green eyes -- and she was raising her fork to the man's lips with a mischievous laugh.

"Mark?" Amber prompted, a feeling of impending doom settling over her.

"Mark!" Jillian bellowed from the counter. "Close the door! I'm not heating all of Center City!"

"Huh?" Mark blinked and glanced over at Jill.

"Mark... the door?" Amber suggested, suddenly and acutely embarrassed.

"Oh, sorry."

"Are those your friends?" she remarked.

"Yes," Mark said coldly.

He led Amber over toward the table, where, belatedly, she recognised the dark haired woman from the cinema.

Jason noticed Princess taking a deep breath and going very still, almost as though she were listening to something. Then, as Mark and his blonde companion approached, Princess leaned forward and whispered, "Twenty bucks says you won't be taking her home tonight."

"Oh, yeah?" Jason glanced over his shoulder to give Amber an appraising -- and appreciative -- glance. "You're on." He smiled and got to his feet, all charm, to take Amber's hand. "Hi," he said. "You must be Amber..."

 

 

Mark stepped out onto wet, dew-heavy grass, flight bag in hand.

He walked out to where his plane was parked, unlocked the canopy and slid it back to the stops, tossed the bag over onto the seat and placed the key in its customary "grabbable" position atop the dash. Leaning into the cockpit, he snapped the avionics master switch on, noted the fuel levels, turned the switch off again, double checked it, flipped open the glove compartment, retrieved the dipstick and the fuel tester, and began his walk-around.

Prop clean, edges smooth, no cracks, minimal chips. No icing or obstructions around the cowling. Flip open the top flap, check the oil. Close the flap. Mainwheel tyres inflated and in good order. "Undercarriage down and welded," as they say. Good.

His hand ran over the polished aluminium, like a rider maintaining contact with a horse.

Lean over the wing, twist off the fuel cap, eyeball the fuel, dip and read the levels - congruent with the gauges. Good.

He paused, leaned against the fuselage, and let his breath out in a long plume of mist.

Somehow, his plans had gone awry last night at the "J."

Crouching low underneath the trailing edge of the port wing, tester needle in the bleed valve, fill the sample bulb, straighten up, and hold it up to the light. No contaminants, no water in the motion lotion. Good.

Pull the pitot cover off the tube, stow in back pocket. No bugs building little bug-houses in there... nope. Good.

He hadn't managed to do a whole lot of catching up with Amber, after all.

Unclip the rope from the loop under the wing, check that the flaps are firm, then waggle the aileron to confirm full, free and opposite motion. Walk aft and note that all the aerials are in place. Take the locks off the tailplane and check the elevator movement. Remove the rudder lock. Trim tab looking good, rudder firmly attached to tail. Unclip the tie down rope. Tailwheel okay. Good.

Somehow, the seating arrangements had wound up so that Amber was sitting with Jason and chatting with him all evening. Tiny and Keyop had jumped ship and headed out to that seafood place Tiny was always raving about. It was probably just as well. Tiny and Amber remembered each other from their pilot courses at the Academy, but Keyop had unaccountably been pulling faces and glowering. He seemed to have taken an instant dislike to Amber, for some reason.

Juggle the rudder lock and the elevator lock and check the aileron on the starboard wing, then flaps, unclip and coil the tie-down rope, then take the fuel sample from that tank and check it. Uh-oh. Water. Condensation, no doubt. Bleed again until clear. Good.

Princess had insisted on telling really embarrassing jokes and stories from when they'd been kids, which had Amber in stitches, then Jason insisted on trying to top them.

Mark stowed the locks in the aft hatch, then climbed aboard, leaving the canopy open.

Then, somehow, Jason wound up giving Amber a ride home.

Brakes on, fuel on... It had all been very strange. Master switch on, prime the engine, mixture rich, throttle to start, carburettor heat on, mags on, key in the ignition, lean out and yell, "CLEAR PROP!" even if there's no-one there. He turned the key and the engine coughed and roared and the propeller spun and the little plane jounced against the brakes, eager to fly.

Yes, it had all been very strange.

Keep the RPM under a thousand, play the throttle and let her settle... Switch the VHF radio on, check frequencies and volume; set the altimeter to today's barometric pressure at sea level, as per the weather report; transponder to standby.

Then afterwards, as he was leaving, Princess had said the strangest thing of all.

"Best twenty I ever spent."

Close the canopy, make the taxi call, do the run-up tests -- check hatches and harnesses.

Mark frowned as he taxied towards the runway threshold.

What could she have meant by that?

It was all very strange.

 

 

Princess sipped at her coffee and turned the page on the book she was reading.

Keyop came barrelling up the stairs with the sort of noise that only small boys and stampeding wildebeest are capable of. His grin was almost too wide for his face. He lurched to a stop outside Princess' room, nearly overbalancing as the momentum of his school satchel threatened to carry him several steps further.

"Arrrrrip-pip-pip! G-guess... guess what!"

"What?" Princess asked.

"Drrrroot! Got an 'A'.... assignment... on folklore! Thanks... for help! Trrrit-pip! Teacher read it out... to... whole class!"

"Hey, that's great!" Princess found Keyop's grin infectious and she beamed at her foster brother as she marked her place in the book and got up from her small sofa. "Why don't I make some hot chocolate to celebrate?"

"Yeah!" Keyop agreed enthusiastically.

"Go wash your hands and face," Princess said briskly. She glanced at an empty corner of the room, and smiled.

"You... okay?" Keyop asked.

"Never better. Go on, get cleaned up, and I'll make us that chocolate."

Keyop's grin faded only slightly at the prospect of water and soap, but he clattered off to the bathroom without protest.

Princess watched as Swallow followed the Swallow down the hall. Since her encounter with Coyote, she had found herself able to perceive not only auras, but all manner of otherworldly, uncanny creatures which, at times, seemed to virtually swarm about the place. Mark, unsurprisingly, was shadowed by a white Eagle, which he ignored, only ever going quiet and thoughtful when the frustrated raptor screamed in his ears and buffeted him about the head with its pinions. Jason had a dark and brooding Condor which tended to nudge him here and there, Keyop, a mischievous Swallow, and Tiny a calm and imposing Horned Owl. Her own Swan offered the odd word of advice, the occasional wry comment. Eagle, on the other hand, never spoke to her directly, but sometimes she caught it casting what looked like a pleading gaze in her direction, almost as though it wanted her help in getting through to Mark.

Princess had no idea how to broach the subject to anyone in such a way that wouldn't result in her being committed for psychiatric assessment. She had gone to the library and looked up some psychology texts, specifically looking for information on schizophrenia, but as her "voices" and "visions" didn't seem to be derogatory or repetitive, and since she _was_ able to shut them out when she wanted to, she felt certain that whatever she was experiencing, it wasn't that particular mental disorder.

She was rapidly coming to the conclusion that it was real.

Her communicator chimed, and she raised her wrist reflexively.

"G-3," she said crisply.

"G-1," she heard Mark check in.

"G-2," came Jason's call.

"G-5," Tiny answered.

" _Glub_! G-4," Keyop said, last of all.

"Attention, G-Force! Spectra's hellhound ship has been sighted again over the Rocky Mountains," 7-Zark-7's electronic voice reached them. "Scramble, team!"


	3. Part III

##  **Part III**

 

_She was fed up with the routine,_   
_She got trouble with her man,_   
_She blew town, with a vengeance._

 - _Skinwalker_ (Robbie Robertson and the Red Road Ensemble, _Music for the Native Americans_ )

_"That was too close for comfort," Eagle sighed._

_"Yes. If Princess hadn't made that bet with Jason..."_

_"I would have had to give Mark that talk about Duty and Responsibility all over again, just like that business with Amanda, and we'd be worse off than before. Why is it that we only seem to move backward with that boy?" Eagle wondered._

_"Because he's thick as a brick, dear," Swan said comfortably. "After all, how many totemic guides have to actually head butt their humans in the stomach in order to give them a gut feeling?"_

_Eagle sighed again._

_"This had better work," he said._

_"I know," Swan agreed ruefully._

 

 

"Where are they headed?" Mark wanted to know, glaring at the blip on their screen which was the hellhound mecha as Jason, last to embark, entered the bridge.

"It looks as though they're on an intercept course with a convoy of nuclear waste trucks," Princess said mildly.

"What would Spectra want with waste?" Tiny wondered.

"Grrrrroooot-toot! Intellectual... property," Keyop quipped.

"Huh?" Tiny shot a quick glance at the Swallow.

"Shit for brains!" Keyop blurted, giggling.

"Very funny," Jason pretended to glower at Keyop, but the corners of his mouth kept turning up despite himself. He passed by Princess' console on the way to his own station and palmed the twenty dollar bill she slipped into his gloved hand. "What are they carrying? Could it be weapons-grade?"

"I'll check," Princess said, consulting the computer.

A moment later, the communications console flashed with an incoming transmission.

"Zark, what's the word?" Mark greeted the robot's image.

"G-Force, the authorities have only just revealed to us that the nuclear waste convoy being pursued by that dreadful hellhound mecha isn't nuclear waste at all, but a secret shipment of gold!" Zark told them.

"I suppose that's one way to hide your valuables," Princess remarked.

"If Spectra gets hold of such a large amount of negotiable currency," Zark said, "then they'll be able to afford a great deal of high-powered weaponry and technology, and our economy will suffer quite a dent to boot! You have to stop them!"

"Roger!" the team responded, in unison.

Tiny was already making best speed for their altitude, but Princess keyed for an updated weather readout.

"Tiny," she spoke up as she directed the data to the pilot's console.

"Yes, Princess?"

"What do you think of the tailwind another five hundred feet up?"

Tiny consulted the readout.

"Not bad. Another fifteen to twenty knots, maybe." He began transmitting flight plan amendments as he put the warship into a shallow climb.

Mark glanced sharply at Princess, then blinked. For an instant, the ghostly image of an animal seemed to be reflected in her visor, but it was just the light, and Princess was simply Princess, head bent in concentration over her console.

"A couple of Bird Missiles should take care of that mecha," Jason suggested, flexing his fingers.

"We can't risk hitting any soft targets," Mark said. "We'll be near a populated area."

"If that sonic pulse of Spectra's knocks us out of the sky again," Princess pointed out sharply, "we might not have a lot of choice in the matter."

Mark gaped.

Princess toyed with the idea of seeing if she could flip her yo-yo between his teeth. Her fingers twitched.

"I'm in command. We'll fire the bird missiles as and when I give the order," Mark decided, recovering himself.

Behind Mark's back, Jason raised an eyebrow at Princess, who wisely pretended not to notice.

"Whatever we do," she said, "we need to do it before that thing opens fire."

Princess caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of one eye, and didn't look towards it. The grey, slinking shape came closer until it nudged at her hand with its nose.

 _Well_? she thought at it, _what do we do, now_?

 _Don't ask me_ , Coyote retorted silently. _I'm not a member of G-Force_.

 _Oh, really_! Swan interjected, waddling over. _You Tricksters_! She shook out her tail feathers. _Princess, you know as well as anyone on this ship what has to be done. You're probably the most intelligent member of this team, barring Keyop, and he hasn't reached his full potential. Now, think..._

Princess considered: come to think of it, Swan was right. Among the specialist educators Chief Anderson employed, Keyop was considered somewhat of a genius savant, but he was still a child, no matter how much he might like to deny it. Although she was just as competent as Mark, Jason and Tiny, and in fact regularly scored higher than they did in IQ and aptitude tests, she rarely came forward with suggestions or ideas, even when things seemed abundantly obvious to her. Now, why was that?

 _Because I don't trust my own judgement_ , she provided her own answer.

Princess' brows knit under her visor. Not any more. Not this little white bird.

"Tiny," she spoke aloud as she began keying at speed on her console, retrieving information from Zark's telemetry feed, "what's our ETA?"

"About seven point five minutes," the pilot said.

"Darrrrrroooot! Watcha... doin'?" Keyop asked.

"Checking the records of all the previous engagements with this thing," Princess muttered.

"Records?" Keyop echoed.

"Conventional forces tangled with it before we did, last time out," she explained briskly, without pausing in her work. "With any luck, I can use the data from their logs as well as our own to guesstimate the effective range of that pulse weapon -- and analyse the EM and sonic components. If we can draw it away by staying just out of range, we might have a shot at bringing it down -- or better, damaging it and tracking it back to its base."

"That sounds like a plan," Jason said with a grin.

"Provided you're on the money with the range calculation, Princess" Mark said, bemused.

"If you have any better ideas, Commander, now would be the time to share," Princess shot back.

One corner of Jason's mouth twitched, and he turned to focus on carrying out an unnecessary cross-check of the weapons readout so that he wouldn't laugh at the expression on Mark's face. It was a good thing, he decided, that the environmental system was designed to keep insects out of the ship.

Princess' fingers skipped across the console, checking and rechecking her calculations.

"Five minutes," Tiny reported, with a backward glance.

"About two and half kilometres," Princess said, "judging from how it took out a squadron of remote-controlled fighters on its last time out."

"Well within range of our bird missiles," Jason said. "Why would they limit themselves to short range, like that?"

"Drrrrrooot-toot! Might be... a trap?" Keyop suggested.

"Or maybe they were counting on us getting up close and personal rather than shooting first and asking questions later," Princess said. "We have a habit of doing that."

"We have a habit of beating the stuffing out of them, too," Jason said darkly.

"We've seen them recover from a missile strike," Mark pointed out. "They simply reconfigured when we hit them last time out, so I guess our bird missiles don't bother them all that much."

"I say we get in and tease them," Princess said. "We'll fly in, see if they power up their weapon, and if need be, we get out of range at full speed. The pulse moves at the speed of sound, so Tiny should be able to go supersonic and outrun it."

"Then we blow 'em to kingdom come," Jason concluded, "or better: we'll rig a bird missile with a homing device instead of an explosive warhead and track them back to their base!"

"How long will it take to get this missile ready?" Mark asked. "We're only four minutes away."

"You'll have to keep them busy a while," Princess said as she rose to her feet. "I'll need at least ten."

She headed for the aft hatch and was gone before Mark could point out that he hadn't given the go-ahead yet.

"I guess that's our plan," he muttered, casting a frown in the direction Princess had taken.

"Hey," Jason mused, "Did I just suggest that we _not_ blow something up?"

Mark kept his silence. It was all very strange.

As the distance between the two ships shrank, Tiny adjusted his course to intercept in a wide arc, keeping them just out of the assumed range of the pulse weapon.

Mark remained standing behind his own empty seat, his fingers clenching over the top of the backrest, his jaw tense, glaring at the hellhound ship as though he might bring it to ground through sheer antipathy.

"This had better work," he addressed no-one in particular.

"If it doesn't, we'll do something else," Jason said without smiling.

Mark gritted his teeth, and refrained from commenting.

Tiny shifted his feet against the rudder pedals, let his fingers flex across the control panel, grimly focussed on his flying. He edged the warship a little closer to the hellhound, and a bead of sweat formed just below his hairline, trickling into one eyebrow. He blinked, aware of the tension he was holding in his body, and took a deep breath without taking his attention away from the task at hand.

"Darrroooot! Range... one point seven kilometres," Keyop said.

"Keep your feathers on," Jason drawled. "There's no power build-up coming from that thing."

"Prrrrip-pip-peep! Yet!" Keyop said.

"Not too close, Tiny," Mark cautioned. "We're trying to buy time, not provoke them."

"We need to look convincing," Jason said.

"Convincing is one thing, suicidal's quite another," Mark said.

"You're the boss," Jason acquiesced with a shrug.

Tiny allowed the Phoenix to drift away from the hellhound, and the Spectran ship followed.

"Hello," Jason said, raising an eyebrow. "And hello again... They're powering up, Tiny."

"Let's shake a tail feather," Mark suggested as Tiny arced away from the mecha.

 

In the armoury, Princess shifted her weight to balance as the warship moved around her.

 _Pretty wild ride, huh_? Coyote observed.

 _I've been through worse,_ Princess recalled. "Nearly there," she murmured aloud. "Don't suppose you could lend me a hand?"

 _Sorry, little one,_ Coyote demurred, _that falls outside my Terms of Reference for this project._

 _No harm in asking,_ Princess said, and finished re-fitting the nacelle on her chosen missile. She returned the weapon to the rack and activated a control console which moved the projectile up towards the firing mechanism, then logged out and ran for the hatchway. "Princess to Jason," she said into her communicator, "I'm done. You've got yourself one radio rocket to go!"

"Understood," Jason reply came through crisp and clear. "Hold on, they're firing at us!"

The deck lurched under Princess' feet as Tiny sent the Phoenix through the sound barrier, then pitched as the ship turned back again. Princess made best speed back to the bridge just as Jason fired a volley of missiles at their enemy.

Explosions ripped through the hellhound, which split up and reconfigured. One of the small ships was unable to rejoin its fellows, hampered by an unexploded missile which protruded from its port side.

"Telemetry?" Mark snapped.

"Arrrrrrrooot-doot! Got it!" Keyop piped happily. "Good signal!"

 

 

Aboard the reuniting hellhound, Zoltar snarled into his own communication system.

"Return to base, unit seventeen. You are useless to me as you are! Be thankful I do not order you to self-destruct, but the G-Force missile may well do that for you and save us both the trouble!"

"Yes, Sire!" the hapless pilot replied, and turned his craft for home.

 

 

"Did we pack extra missiles?" Jason wanted to know.

"As many as the armoury crew could squeeze in," Tiny replied, banking steeply as the Phoenix described a wide ellipse around the hellhound.

"That's what I like to hear," Jason said, and reached blissfully for the firing controls.

 

 

"They're not giving us enough time to reconfigure, Sire!" the weapons officer explained. The purple image on his communicator screen gritted its teeth and wavered as another explosion shook the mecha formation.

"Withdraw and regroup!" Zoltar ordered.

 

 

"Aw, you can't go home just yet!" Jason said. "I'm just starting to have fun!"

"You've got eight missiles left," Princess announced. "Make them count."

"They're reforming!" Mark said.

"A reformed Zoltar?" Princess quipped. "I wouldn't bet on it."

"What _would_ you bet on?" Jason parried with a quick grin.

Princess only smiled.

"Exactly how many of those things have to be plugged in to each other before they can fire that pulse weapon?" Tiny wanted to know.

"I don't know," Princess said, frowning. "Keyop --"

"Darroooot! Hard to tell... Prrrripp-pip -- multiple... readings!"

"Tiny," Mark said, "get us --"

"Outa here," Tiny finished the sentence.

"Power -- grrrrrrip-pip -- spike!" Keyop stammered.

"They're winding up to fire again," Jason confirmed, grabbing at his console with one hand as the ship banked steeply and the acceleration pushed him back into his seat.

A sonic boom reverberated as the _Phoenix_ streaked away from the hellhound ship.

 

 

"Sire! They are retreating!" the Comms Officer said.

"I can see that, you fool," Zoltar growled. "Catch them!"

"Engineering regrets to report we have sustained too much damage to match their speed, Sire," the ship's Commander said reluctantly, edging out of striking range of his Glorious Leader.

"What of the trucks carrying the gold?" Zoltar demanded.

"The trucks have entered a tunnel, Sire," the Comms Officer said. "We have lost them."

"Curses!" Zoltar cried, all but stamping a foot. "Imbeciles! Return to base!"

 

 

"They're disengaging and turning back," Jason said, grinning. "Perfect."

"Tiny, follow at a distance," Mark ordered. "Stay just within telemetry range. I don't want them getting wise to us."

"Big ten, Commander," Tiny replied, setting course and trimming his ship for cruise.

Mark glanced over his shoulder at his team's technical expert.

"So far, your plan seems to be working, Princess."

"So far," she agreed. "Let's just hope they don't decide to ditch that unexploded missile." She glanced at the empty space next to her left knee, then returned her attention to the main view screen.

"Everyone keep your fingers crossed," Mark advised wryly.

 

 

There is no tradition of crossing the fingers to ward off evil or to invoke good luck in any of the cultures that make up the weft and warp of the tapestry of Spectran society. If there had been, Ing and Harek would have observed it. As it was, the crew of the unfortunate Unit Seventeen could do little more than hope and pray that the missile embedded in the hull of their hellhound module wouldn't explode.

It is said in most Spectran cultures, however, that one should never underestimate the power of prayer.

The missile, being the one Princess had doctored, would only have exploded under two sets of circumstances: the first being the ignition of its fuel supply by an external source -- like Unit Seventeen's self-destruct mechanism. Needless to say, neither Ing nor Harek were about to activate the self-destruct mechanism. Spectra had gained more than its fair share of martyrs out of this war.

The second set of circumstances had been carefully calculated.

Unit Seventeen's communications panel lit up with several queries and Ing answered them all in a more or less sensible order, while Harek guided the small ship down into what looked like an ordinary arroyo.

A barrel cactus tipped back, revealing a hatch in the sand, and a rather nervous bomb disposal squad clambered out to stand around surveying the scene.

Nobody looked up to see the tiny speck that was the _Phoenix_ , circling at altitude.

 

 

"Team," Zark declared, "my scanners show that you're almost directly over a secret Spectra base!"

"As opposed to being almost directly over a common-knowledge Spectra base?" Princess drawled, leaning her chin on the heel of one hand.

"Er... well..." Zark giggled. "You have a point there, Princess..."

"Data downloaded," Princess said. "Thanks for the information, Zark."

"Put it on the main viewer," Mark said.

"Big ten." Princess finished keying the command and the viewer illuminated with several map images.

"How do they keep slipping through our defences to build these things?" Jason muttered.

"Too easily," Mark growled. "Tiny, take us downstairs. We're going visiting."

"Darrroooot-toot! Just in time..." Keyop said, "for... tea!"

 

 

The Disposal Squad had decided Ing and Harek could safely leave Unit Seventeen, and had returned to the safety of their underground bunker while a utility robot, which somewhat resembled an child's old fashioned pedal-car with a tool kit welded to each end, did the dirty work.

This was just as well, due to the second set of circumstances under which the missile was rigged to explode.

When the missile exploded, it took out Unit Seventeen, the utility robot, the barrel cactus, several clumps of spinifex, a tarantula, approximately fifteen insects and a rattlesnake.

The Spectran Base Commander, however, was not as concerned about the damage as he was about the rather loud accompanying, "Boom!"

A "Boom!" that might well attract the attention of five rather unpleasant people in one rather unpleasant big blue and red warship.

A "Boom!" that might well lead to other "Booms!" many of which "Booms!" might well be larger and louder than the initial "Boom!" And closer, too, which was never a good thing.

Which was why the Spectran Base Commander had doubled the guard and was reviewing his Evacuation Plans.

 

 

"Darrooot-toot! Starting... arrrip! party... early?" Keyop trilled, raising his head to catch a glimpse of a dark plume of smoke that rose out of an arroyo about a quarter of a mile away. "Umph!" he added, as Princess' hand pushed his head back down beneath the cover of the dry creek bank they were hiding behind.

"They must have tried to deactivate the missile," she said, a quick flicker of a grin illuminating her face for a moment.

"You booby trapped it?" Mark inferred.

 "Like, duh!"

Mark gritted his teeth as Jason suppressed a snicker.

"The entrance is this way," Mark said, and began moving.

The way in was concealed under a dense clump of spinifex, but gave itself away with a gentle but steady outflow of stale air. Jason muttered something about the spiky grass being more of a deterrent than a squad of Spectrans as he applied the drill attachment of his gun to the rivets holding the ventilation unit together.

"We're making enough noise to wake the dead," Princess said as the drill bit into steel plate with a scream.

"You want omelette," Jason shot back, "you're going to have to break a few eggs."

"Then we may as well have the full breakfast!" Princess decided, sweeping her yo-yo out of its holster. "Come on, Keyop!"

Swan and Swallow hurried down the arroyo and vanished into the undergrowth.

Mark frowned and glared out at the blue-tinted desert.

"Don't say it," Jason told him. "I'm done when I'm done."

Seconds later, Mark was helping Jason lift the cover off the ventilation unit.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Mark said, and peered down the shaft.

Jason finished readjusting his gun and fired the cable down into the ventilation system.

The sharp ping of bullets answered the _thud_ of the cable attachment.

"As usual," Jason observed, "your hunch was right."

"Where's Princess when we need her?" Mark grumbled, and turned at the sound of light footfalls, approaching at speed.

Keyop pelted up the creek bed, all grinning eagerness.

"Arrrooot-toot!" the boy chirped. "Party time!" He lobbed a small explosive down the ventilator shaft and dived for cover, closely followed by his team mates.

Mark sprang to his feet to find his vision was obscured by smoke, dust and grit, and that his left nostril was full of sand. He sneezed and spat, aware of Keyop's hazy silhouette ahead of him. The Keyop-shape appeared to drop something down the shaft.

"We don't have a lot of time to do this thing," Mark announced. His progress through the thick cloud of dust toward the ventilator shaft was impeded by Keyop, tugging at his cape.

"Drrrrrrritt-pip! This way," Keyop said, and dashed back the way he had come.

 _Is anybody listening to me, at all, today_? Mark wondered. He set off at a run as Jason passed him.

Down in the base, chaos reigned supreme as the timer on the second set of charges Keyop had tossed down the ventilation shaft hit "zero" and detonated.

Mark pulled up short at the sight that greeted him as he rounded the bend in the arroyo: a large double door in the sand had been exposed and opened; two Spectran troopers lay unconscious in the spinifex, and Princess was nowhere to be seen.

"Nice," Jason remarked. "Looks like Princess started the party without us. I guess we'd better follow the path of destruction, huh, skipper?"

"It's starting to look that way," Mark said.

 

 

Zoltar strode out of the lead hellhound, cape billowing. The Base Commander scuttled out of a corridor, attempted to match strides with his Glorious Leader, and failed. Obliged to resort to a sort of half-skipping pace, the officer attempted to deliver a report.

"G-Force may have... uh... infiltrated Section Seven, Sire," he recounted, "and Section Five has sustained some damage, as has Section Twelve.... Sorry, Sire, did I step on your cape? Um... There was a reported sighting of a possible G-Force member in Section Two."

"Section Two?" Zoltar stopped abruptly and turned on the Base Commander, a manoeuvre that lost its effectiveness as the Base Commander, who was still going on his previous momentum, was now a good three paces ahead.

"Yes, Sire."

"Increase security around the hellhound hangar and the main power plant," Zoltar ordered. "If I know G-Force -- and I do -- they will try to sabotage the ship or the reactor, and in doing so, they will fall straight into our hands!"

"Yes, Sire."

"Do not stand there bowing and scraping, you imbecile! Carry out my command!"

"Yes, Sire!" The Base Commander saluted and scuttled back the way he had come.

 _Perfect!_ Princess decided from her vantage point within a ventilation duct in the ceiling above them. The base showed signs of having been constructed quickly, with concrete walls that were shored up in places by scaffolding. On her way through the base, Princess had noticed places where there were cracks in the walls and dust lying on the floor, caused, most probably, by the explosions she and Keyop had set off. If the Spectran builders of this facility had made it a rush-job, all the better for her purposes. Poorly cured concrete collapsed nicely with the right kind of motivation.

Princess waited for Zoltar to disappear down the corridor, then sailed down to floor level and headed for where she hoped she would find, not the hellhound ships, but the maintenance computers. As she moved, she tapped on the face of her wrist communicator.

 

 

"Looks like Princess has this gig all worked out," Jason said under his breath as he deciphered the series of flashes emanating from his wrist unit.

Mark scowled.

The sound of marching feet sent the three G-Forcers scurrying for cover. Jason forced the door on a maintenance riser and got them all inside just before the feet and their owners rounded the corner, going at double-quick time.

Barrrrooot-doot! Looking... for us!" Keyop breathed.

"As long as they don't find us," Mark quipped, "that suits me fine." He pulled a hand away from the wall. "Water?"

"Looks like seepage," Jason observed.

"In the desert?"

"We're a fair way down," Jason reasoned. "If this base was built on a natural aquifer, it'd make the whole place unstable." G-2's grin became feral as he started tapping out a return message on his communicator.

 

 

Ing accepted the steaming cup of tea and sank into an empty chair.

 "I really need this," he said, inhaling the fragrant, spicy vapours.

 "You were lucky," Mia said, flipping through the large and ever increasing list of job orders on her screen. "Not many people get shot by G-Force and live to tell the tale."

 "The Great Spirit of Spectra was watching over me, for sure," Ing concluded, and sipped appreciatively at the tea.

 "Must be all those prayers Ma and Fa keep saying for us," Mia decided. "Oh, would you look at that? Sub-basement G is flooding again..." She keyed in commands to start the auxiliary dewatering pumps. "You'd think this base was built in a swamp!"

Ing made no reply. His plastic teacup hit the floor with a wet _slosh_ which was followed by a dull and heavy thud as Ing himself fell on the teacup.

Mia had no time to scream: the yo-yo knocked her out cold before she could draw in her breath.

Princess locked the door, took over Mia's newly vacated chair and began scrolling through the maintenance files.

 

 

Bullets sparked off the guard rail as Mark leapt clear and hit the gantry running. His sonic boomerang sang its dangerous song and arced around the room, hitting his palm with a solid smack. Mark leaped again, grabbing at a handhold in the scaffolding and vanished into the shadows.

"Where did he go?" demanded the Spectran lieutenant. "Find him, you fools!"

 

 

"Barrooot-toot! Mark... gets all... arrrit-pip! The fun!" Keyop grizzled.

"Quit your belly aching," Jason told him, "and keep an eye out for any fresh patrols."

"Prrrrrrrrrrrooop-doop! Keep... both eyes out!" Keyop retorted. He returned his attention to the task at hand: that of dragging the unconscious Spectran soldiers out of sight underneath the hellhound ships.

Jason's drill shrieked as it bit into the belly of the hellhound Command Module.

Lieutenant Puro marched his troop through the main hangar.

"I thought the patrols were supposed to be doubled in here!" he said.

The men glanced about nervously.

A high pitched scream of metal upon metal was emanating from near the Command Module.

"What's going on over there?" Puro demanded. "Come with me, men!"

A remarkably short soldier ducked out from behind the Command Module and saluted, his uniform sleeve hanging over the ends of his hands.

"Routine maintenance!" piped the short soldier.

"Where is everyone?" Puro wanted to know. The soldier only shrugged and grinned. "Speak up, you miserable excuse for a conscript dog!"

An alarm sounded.

"ATTENTION: INTRUDER ALERT. REACTOR LEVEL THREE. ALL AVAILABLE PERSONNEL RESPOND TO INTRUDER ALERT. REACTOR LEVEL THREE."

"Come on!" Puro led his troop away at a run.

"That was close," Jason decided, peering out from under the ship he had been doctoring.

"Whew!" Keyop let out his breath in an exaggerated sigh of relief.

"Hand me the communicator chip," Jason said. Keyop passed over a glittering fleck the size of his little fingernail.

 

 

Mark slithered down the ladder in the riser, stopping short of an access door as it was flung open. Holding his breath, he shrank away from the flashlight beam that almost caught him in telltale light.

"Nothing here," growled a voice. "Come on, we should be back at the reactor room, not wasting our time peering into maintenance ducts!"

"Good idea," Mark muttered as the door slammed closed again. He raised his wrist. "How's it going, Jason?"

"All done," his second reported. "Just finishing up the cosmetic job so that Zoltar won't even know we've been here! No, Keyop, not duct tape! Use that crazy glue you found in the tool box..."

Crazy glue?

"I'm not going to ask," Mark decided. "Princess?"

"Ready when you are," she replied. "Jason, can I start uploading?"

"Go for it," Jason told her.

"Everybody rendezvous back at the _Phoenix_!" Mark told them.

Princess deactivated her communicator.

"Like, duh," she muttered to herself, and tapped away at the keyboard, humming under her breath. " _How much is that doggie in the window? The one with the waggledy tail?_ "

 

 

Zoltar jumped as the first explosion shook the base.

"What was that?" the Base Commander exclaimed.

"If you wish to wait around to find out, fool, then be my guest!" Zoltar told him, running toward the hellhound hangar.

 

 

The warship _Phoenix_ hung over the hidden desert base like a hovering raptor, waiting for the mouse to make a wrong move.

"Nothing's happening," Mark observed, frowning at the image on the main screen.

"Give it a minute," Princess suggested, smirking.

A disturbance in the sand below caught the attention of the five observers. A long straight depression appeared and widened, sand and spinifex falling down into a dark void beneath.

"Main hangar looks like it's opening," Tiny said, his hand resting on the throttle levers that would deliver the power he needed to get the _Phoenix_ climbing.

"That's what we want to see," Jason remarked.

A rectangular gape yawned in the earth, its interior mostly in shadow, and out of the depths, the damaged, but still ominous shape of the hell hound rose into view.

Rockets firing, the alien ship ascended toward the _Phoenix_.

"Lassie, come home," Princess drawled.

"Very funny," Mark growled. He'd been about to make that wisecrack, himself.

"Better fire off a couple of missiles to make 'em think we're looking for a fight," Jason decided, and sent a couple of rockets speeding toward the hellhound. The rockets streaked past the ship, and hit the ground below.

Instead of leaving two relatively small craters, however, the rockets exploded, then all signs of their impact vanished as the earth shook and about two acres of the ground seemed to collapse in on itself with a slow, dust billowing, _whump!_

"Oops," Princess said. "Someone must have turned off the dewatering pumps and set the support risers to blow."

"Wonder who that could have been?" Jason said, grinning.

Tiny had the _Phoenix_ in a steep climb as the hellhound closed in on them.

"I don't like this," the pilot commented, increasing power. "It's too close!"

"Increase range," Mark ordered.

"I'm tryin', already!" Tiny cried.

The hellhound opened its ponderous jaws.

"Power levels building," Jason reported. "They're about to fire their weapon."

"We're still too close!" Tiny exclaimed.

"And a-one, and a-two, and a-" Princess said as the Spectran sound weapon fired.

 _"HOW MUCH IS THAT DOGGIE IN THE WINDOW?_ " sang the hellhound. _"THE ONE WITH THE WAGGLEDY TAIL?"_

"Surprise," Princess said.

"I love it," Jason said. "I think we should award Zoltar an honorary Grammy."

"I wish I could see Zoltar's face, right about now," Mark said wistfully.

 _"I DO HOPE THAT PUPPY'S FOR SALE!"_ wailed the hellhound.

Electrical discharges began to spark up and down the length of the alien ship.

"And now for the laser light show," Princess said.

Smoke began to billow from the Command Module.

_"I DON'T WANT A GOOOOOLLLLLLDFFIIIIIISSSHSSSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHHHHHH"_

A small escape craft shot out of the hellhound's left ear and made a rapid ascent.

The hellhound began to lose altitude, sparking, smoking and moaning.

_"'CAUSE YOUUUUUU CAAAANNN'T TAAAAAAKE AAAAA GOOOOOLDFIIIISHSHSH FOOOOORRRRRR AAAA WWWWAAAAALLLK...."_

The Spectran ship hit the ground and skidded, throwing up billows of sand and dust. It rolled and arced and crumpled to an untidy stop.

Overhead, fighter jets screamed in, providing cover for a heavy transport.

"Here come the regular troops," Mark observed. "Nice work, everyone."


	4. Part IV

##  **Part IV**

 

 _A strange encounter, to be sure,_  
_He was wicked, he was pure._  
_Hear him calling, he's calling for you._

 _\- Skinwalker (_ Robbie Robertson and the Red Road Ensemble _, Music for the Native Americans)_

 

"We lost Zoltar," Chief Anderson announced. "He gave the Cosmic Patrol the slip just the other side of the Moon. He'll be back, but we'll be here waiting for him."

"With a nice leash," Princess added.

"I think we can dispense with the dog jokes," Mark suggested.

"Just because you didn't think of it first," Princess countered.

"Under the circumstances, Mark," Anderson said, "I think you should be congratulating Princess on her quick thinking and resourcefulness. Her application may have been a little... unorthodox, but her methodology was brilliant."

"Yes, Chief." Mark didn't meet Princess' eyes. He couldn't be sure, but he thought he heard Princess murmur, "So there, Chicken Boy."

"Our scientists are studying the hellhound ship, and we'll soon have all the information we need on both the ship and its sonic weapon. Well done, G-Force."

With the briefing over, Mark waited outside the briefing room while Princess stayed behind to talk with Chief Anderson. When she finally emerged, he caught up to her.

"Uh, Princess?"

"Yes?" she responded, without breaking stride.

"Um, I was wondering... if you'd like to, ah... you know... go somewhere... a movie... or something?"

"Maybe some other time," Princess suggested.

"Oh... uh, Princess?"

"Yes?"

"You, ah... you're not in any trouble with the Chief, are you?"

"Of course not! We discussed the sonic weaponry we captured from Zoltar. He wants me to be G-Force liaison with the scientific team."

"Oh... well... um... I, ah..."

"What?"

"I, um... I'm heading back to the surface... Would you like to get a hot chocolate or something?"

"No, thanks, Commander. I think I'll probably go to a disco and have some _fun_."

She ducked into an elevator and left him standing like a cactus on an iceberg, alone in the corridor, his only company the feeling that whatever it was that just happened, he had somehow thoroughly deserved it.

 

 

_Eagle paced the length of the short porch that fronted Mark's shack. Despite his being an incorporeal bird spirit, he had about him the look of a man who might consult his watch every few seconds. He shook out his snowy white feathers and glared into a sky that reflected the colour of his eyes._

_"I'm here," said a voice, and Eagle turned to glower at Swan._

_"This is a fine mess," Eagle declared. "Someone goes and invokes Coyote, and now Princess is giving Mark such a hard time, the boy doesn't know which way is up!"_

_"I'm surprised you can see a difference," the Swan retorted wryly. "That boy wouldn't know his fundament from his humerus."_

_"True," Eagle admitted, feathers settling._

_"But you're right, dear," Swan conceded, waddling over to sit by the Eagle on the porch, webbed toes curling over the edge of the wooden decking. "Princess is starting to realise that the sun doesn't rise and set with Mark!"_

_"Well... " Eagle considered. "Clarity of vision (1) doesn't have to be a bad thing."_

_"Egotist," Swan rebuked fondly._

_"But what if she decides to dump him?" Eagle speculated. "What do we do, then? You know our instructions: Mark and Princess are Meant For Each Other. It's up to us to make sure they get together."_

_"One supposes one is meant to have faith," Swan replied._

_"Faith?" Eagle sighed. "That's for humans. We're the ones they're supposed to be having faith in!"_

_"Then we'll just have to work a little harder," Swan decided._

_"Oh, great," Eagle clicked his beak irritably. "Like pushing shit up a hill isn't enough trouble already. You try being Mark's totem for a day and see how you like it!"_

_"No, thank you," Swan parried. "Mark's your problem."_

_And she vanished._

_"Thanks for the sour persimmons, cousin," the Eagle muttered._

_"Don't worry," said Coyote, materialising at Eagle's shoulder with a grin full of white fangs, "I'm not done yet!"_

_With a chuckle, the Coyote faded away._

_It was a warm day and there was no breeze, but Eagle shivered, chilled to his non-existent bones._

 

 

Mark sat on the porch and twisted the cap off the beer bottle. He wasn't normally much of a drinker, hardly at all, in fact, but tonight, he felt he deserved a drink or two... or three. He let the cap fall next to its two defunct pack-mates. Life was just too weird.

The full moon rose huge and luminous over the treetops, casting silky soft shadows across the airfield and its few outbuildings. The great silver gold globe filled Mark's vision and he got to his feet, leaning on the porch railing, moonlight streaming down like water rushing over falls, drinking, drowning in the cool, gentle energy.

In the distance, something howled.

Mark took a long pull from the beer bottle. Someone's dog must have got lost. Well, if it turned up, he'd feed it, if it was minded to be sociable, and worry about finding the owner in the morning.

Full moon.

It had been full moon -- exactly a month ago -- when the Phoenix had been forced down by that hellhound ship of Zoltar's, and Princess had started acting out. Something had happened between the landing site and the rendezvous, Mark had never been more certain of anything in his short and eventful life. He could feel it in his bones, in his gut and in his very blood. Something had happened to change her...

And she'd had him hopping ever since.

_"Yip-yip-yip-yip-yaooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwww!"_

Mark took another swallow of beer and put the bottle down. There, about twenty yards from where his plane was tied down, was an animal.

It wasn't a dog...

Too small for a wolf... too big for a fox...

It appeared to be a coyote.

In the few years Mark had resided at the airfield, he'd never heard of a coyote out here, but there was a first time for everything, and Mark reasoned this had to be it.

But... wait a second... the damned thing looked like it was about to pee on his plane!

"Hey!" Mark picked up one of the two empty beer bottles and vaulted the porch rail, poised to throw with the same deadly accuracy that he applied to his sonic boomerang. "Get away from there!"

The coyote vanished.

"What the hell...?" Mark breathed.

He really shouldn't drink on an empty stomach, he mused. Truth be told, said a little voice in his head, he shouldn't drink at all.

Ghostly laughter echoed through the pines beyond the boundary fence.

The empty bottle still in his hand, Mark surveyed the scene: before him, his plane, comfortably bedded down for the night, and -- thankfully -- un-peed-upon. To his left, the airfield grass stretched out to the fence which separated his property from Old Man Watanabe's exotic tree nursery. Mark had once been convinced the septuagenarian horticulturist was growing dope until Jason had pointed out that the plants in question were actually quite expensive ferns destined for the sorts of homes that got their toilet roll holders photographed for big glossy magazines that cost $6.50 at the supermarket checkout. The designer ferns and outrageously priced palms (beloved of all the best landscape gardeners) that Watanabe-san cultivated for sale were responsible for the late model BMW parked in the old man's garage. Beyond that, if Mark looked further to his left, were the lights of Center City.

In the other direction, sweeping around clockwise, the gully split into two little creeks, and one of them curved out and around back towards the airfield boundary and into the wooded area that ran for a few acres to the right. It was from here that the unseelie cackle had floated, and Mark wondered if he should just transmute and be done with it. If he did, his cerebonics would detect the alcohol in his system and trigger one hell of a system purge, and he'd be a wreck tomorrow... better to check it out, first. It might be nothing more than a stray coyote, and everyone knew how wily and canny coyotes were.

Not needing a flashlight in the radiance of the full moon, Mark sauntered across the field, breathing deeply and letting the night air clear his head.

A shadow moved to his right, and he turned to see the coyote grinning at him, fangs glistening white against its red mouth.

"So," Mark addressed it, "are you planning on giving me grief, tonight?"

"You betcha," said the coyote, and dissolved into the moonlight.

Mark's mouth fell open and the bottle fell from his hand to land with a soft thud on the turf.

 _Spectra spies_! His mind raced. What to do? If he were to transmute here, presumably where they could see him, it might just give them what they were looking for: confirmation of his identity. On the other hand, if he didn't transmute, he'd be leaving himself open... _Damn_...

"What is it with you people and that 'transmute' stuff, anyways?" Coyote wanted to know, padding up behind Mark and surprising him into leaping into the air, spinning around and lunging forward in attack. "Oh, puh- _leese_!" Coyote sidestepped and watched as Mark landed flat on his face in the grass.

 _It knows who I am_! the thought speared through Mark's head.

"Can you say, 'duh'?" Coyote suggested. "Course I know who you are. I mean, I've done some pretty dumb things in my lifetime, but I _don't_ get my clients mixed up. Kindly give me some credit for an aeon or two of managing to keep my diary straight."

"Who is this?" Mark demanded, sitting up and searching for a radio collar or some kind of device on the animal. "Is this some kind of a joke?"

"Well, sure it is, Mark!" Coyote agreed. "It's always a joke, with me. I'm the Trickster. Coyote's the name, and jokes are the game! Pleased to meet ya, kid."

The damned thing actually sat down and extended a paw.

"Jason, I don't know where you've hidden the audio hookup on this thing --" Mark made a grab for the doglike creature, and gasped when his hand passed clean through its midsection.

"Neat trick, isn't it?" Coyote remarked, chuckling, then it paused, studying Mark's face with an oddly sober expression. "You're not ready," it decided. "You still think this is some kind of setup... Very well, then, you want to transmute, go ahead -- TRANSMUTE!"

Mark caught his breath, unprepared for the flood of energy from his cerebonic implants as the process surged through him.

 _This isn't possible_ , he told himself, _there's no way Jason -- or Spectra -- could override the voice coding... not unless... unless they had one of our communicators... and I still don't know what happened to Princess that night in Arizona..._

"Kid, you are one hard case," said Coyote, and vanished.

Mark got to his feet, muscles a-quiver from the cerebonic boot-up sequence, aware that if he didn't expend some energy pretty soon, his implant would start purging the alcohol from his system, and it wouldn't be a pleasant experience.

"Where the hell did you go?" he muttered under his breath.

"Lookin' for me?"

Mark spun in the direction of the voice, expecting to see his scruffy grey nemesis, and found himself focussed instead on a pair of denim-clad and human-looking kneecaps.

His boomerang was in his hand with the swiftness of thought.

"Who are you?" Mark demanded, raising his focus from coyote height to man height.

"Can't you guess?" the stranger chided, grinning to reveal perfect white teeth in a tanned and craggily handsome face.

Mark shifted his weight, ready to defend himself as the man reached up to tip back the brim of his battered black hat.

The stranger wore faded blue jeans and cowboy boots with one of those gaudy silver belt buckles that might have come from a Rez gift store. His buckskin shirt was fringed and beautifully decorated with quillwork and beading, and there was an eagle feather trailing from his hat band. Beneath the shadow of the hat, light hazel eyes flecked with gold twinkled, and the stranger shook his head, with a smile.

"Guess not," he decided, shrugging, and vanished.

Mark remained still, motionless, barely breathing, listening for every sound that might betray an intruder. The crickets chirped, unperturbed, and a gentle breeze made the conifers whisper, confiding ancient secrets in one another's needles.

There was no hum of an electric motor, no battery whine, no electronic buzz... nothing.

 _So what just happened_? Mark's rational left hemisphere demanded, at screaming pitch. _Think_! he exhorted himself.

"No, don't," said Coyote. "It'll only get you into trouble."

Mark started violently and caught himself even as his arm moved to loose the boomerang.

"What do you want?" he demanded.

"What do _you_ want?" the animal parried, and loped away, shuffle-scooting under the bottom rail of the boundary fence and trotting off into the woods.

"Hey!" Mark vaulted the fence and lit after his tormentor. "Come back here!"

It was dark in the woods, with the Moonlight filtering through the branches and foliage of the evergreens.

The clean, sharp scent of pine drifted up from under Mark's booted feet as he pulled up to a halt, visored head swinging around, raptor-like, to peer into the shadows with enhanced vision, seeking his quarry.

"Nyaa-nyaa-nyaa-nyaaaaaaaaa-nah!" sang Coyote, and bounced away, with the Eagle in hot pursuit.

Mark ran, keeping his quarry's bushy tail in sight. His cerebonics boosted his energy levels, chemically reinforced the muscle and connective tissues in his limbs, increased the efficiency of lungs and red blood cells, supplemented his body's supply of ATP (2), allowing him to increase his speed, giving him the stamina to run all night, should he need to.

And yet, Coyote was staying ahead of him.

Mark pulled up short, his breath coming deeply and evenly, scanning the woodlands for a glimpse of grey fur, the twitch of a tail, the gleam of white fangs or yellow eyes.

There! Over by the creek, the slinking grey shape of Coyote...

Mark sprang, mantles billowing as the breeze carried him up and forward, landed lightly --

And scrabbled wildly for a handhold, a foothold -- anything -- as the soft earth of the bank gave way beneath his weight.

"Let's lose the birdstyle," Coyote suggested, and Mark found himself back in his civilian clothing, his ankle twisting painfully against a rock without the protection and support offered by his boots.

"You bastard," Mark growled, grimacing as he caught his breath, one leg and one arm in the cold creek water, the rest of him untidily arranged amidst mud and stones.

"You ain't just whistlin' Dixie!" Coyote chortled, and vanished.

Mark took a deep, cold breath, and began collecting both his thoughts and his spraddled limbs. He'd need to high-tail it back to the shack and get himself clean and dry if he weren't to catch his death.

 _I have GOT to be dreaming this,_ he decided.

"Not necessarily," said a voice, and Mark looked up to see the strange man from before, standing at the top of the bank, looking down on him through gold-flecked eyes. "You look like you could use a hand, son," the stranger remarked, extending his arm.

"Don't call me that," Mark said automatically.

The man raised an eyebrow, tilted back his hat and bent his knees, crouching easily at the fragile edge of the embankment.

"I would've thought," he said reflectively, "that an intelligent young feller like you might be smart enough to know when he's in no position to get precious." The hand extended again. "Now, are you fixin' to get out of the water, or aren't you?"

"I can manage," Mark said sullenly, and got to his feet.

He remained on his feet for less than half a second, as his ankle reminded him with a white hot spurt of pain that it wasn't in particularly good shape, right now.

Half leaning, half lying against the bank, Mark waited for the throbbing to subside.

"Boy," the stranger said, "you need me even more than I thought."

"I don't need anyone," Mark muttered, his mortification fuelling a burst of anger.

"Is that so?" the man chuckled. "Well, then, Mister Independent, let's see you climb on up here and show me a thing or two."

Mark used his good leg to push and reached to pull himself up, but the earth yielded beneath his hands, leaving him flailing in the mud.

The stranger straightened up, sighed, and faded away like mist.

Mark froze in place, his chin in the mud, staring at the place where the man had been -- his discomfort was too real for him to be dreaming, of this he was certain. What the hell was going on?

He redoubled his efforts, and succeeded only in bringing down another couple of quarts of mud on his head.

Flopping over onto his back, Mark assessed the situation:

He was cold.

He was damp.

He was injured.

He was -- sort of -- alone.

He let his breath out in an exasperated billow of fog.

His ankle pulsed with pain. Possibly a torn ligament -- the Chief would chew him out over this for sure.

It would probably hurt like hell to have to transmute with the swollen ankle, but the boots would provide the injured area with more support, and he'd be able to get back to the shack in a series of short hopping glides, favouring the right foot, of course.

His wristband was filthy, but a little dirt never bothered it, before. He took a deep breath:

"Transmute!"

A moth fluttered past his nose, and Mark exhaled, frowning.

He was still in his civvies, cold, wet, aching and now he was confused and frustrated as well. He rubbed at the face of his wristband, rearranging the mud.

 _Do I call for help_? he wondered. No. No, definitely not. There would be questions asked that he didn't have a hope of answering.

Mark held the wristband close in case the voice input was clogged.

"TRANSMUTE!!"

Nothing but the play of the wind in the pines, and the ghostly shadow of an owl flickering through the trees.

Had he heard the string of obscenities Mark muttered under his breath, Jason would have been impressed.

On hands and knees, Mark crawled along the edge of the creek, hoping to find a spot where the bank was lower so that he might climb out.

The breeze danced and tickled, raising gooseflesh on Mark's arms, chilling the damp, muddy fabric of his shirt. Precious heat trickled out of his body, making his teeth chatter in autonomic response.

Sand, wet and sharp, ground into the skin on Mark's hands, and he pushed the discomfort out of his mind, focusing on movement: arm forward, knee forward, arm forward, knee forward... slop, squish, squelch...

_Just keep moving... keep going... another foot, another three feet, keep going... one step at a time... Huh... if you can call these 'steps,' that is... I must look pretty silly... heh... I must look damned stupid..._

A small chuckle escaped him at the thought of the glorious Eagle, brought low by a mangy coyote...

How completely and utterly absurd...

The chuckle continued, and Mark sat down, cackling, making a perfunctory attempt at wiping the mud off his hands, and laughing aloud as he only managed to redistribute the mud.

"Now that's a healthier attitude!" said a familiar voice above him.

"Yeah, well sometimes you have to laugh or you go crazy," Mark parried, "although I may be too late for that."

"You want a hand outa there?" the stranger offered.

"If you don't mind getting all muddy," Mark said amiably.

"I've had worse things than that happen to me, Mark," the stranger said, reaching down and hauling Mark out of his predicament by the arms.

"What the...?" Mark looked down at himself in amazement.

The mud, the water and the dirt had vanished. He was warm and dry and comfortable.

Gingerly, he allowed the sprained ankle to take a little weight, blinked at the absence of pain, and stamped the foot a couple of times.

"We don't need that, any more," the stranger explained. "You achieved the state of mental separation you needed: you were able to laugh at yourself, so now we can get to work."

"Who _are_ you?" Mark breathed.

"Told you that already," the stranger pointed out. "Don't you remember?"

And the face that held the strange yellow eyes shifted and changed and Mark found himself staring at the scrawny grey form of Coyote.

"Coyote's the name," he recalled, "and jokes are the game... Why are you here?"

"To lend a helping hand," Coyote said, grinning, "or paw, whichever works for you. Shall we begin?"

Mark reached out.

"Okay."

And the world turned upside down.

 

 

One green eye opened in response to the sharp tap against the windowpane.

 _Could have been a really small bird,_ Princess speculated. _Or a really big moth. Or not._ She tensed under the sheets, ready to leap into action.

_Tap! Tap-tap! Tappedy-tappedy-tap!_

Not a really small bird, then, and probably not a really big moth, either. Which left, _or not_ as an option.

Princess sat up, reaching for her robe, and pulled it on over her nightdress as she pushed her feet into her slippers. She moved silently toward the window, staying out of sight of anyone who might be on the other side.

Moving so swiftly as to appear a shadowy pink chenille blur, Princess threw the window open, reached, grabbed and hauled.

Mark hit the floor, rolled, and found his feet again without dropping the bouquet of yellow roses he had in his left hand.

Princess put one hand on her hip and regarded him in silence for a moment.

"I'm imagining," she said, "that what you're going to tell me next is going to be really, really good."

"Maybe," Mark said, presenting the flowers with a flourish. "But if you don't hurry up and get dressed, we'll miss our flight."

Princess took the roses automatically.

"Yellow roses are supposed to mean, 'I'm sorry,'" she observed.

"I'm saying it with flowers," Mark explained. "I'll wait for you downstairs. You have twenty minutes."

"Twenty minutes for what?"

"To get dressed so we can get to the base on time."

"Mark, it's -- " Princess glanced at the clock on her bedside table -- "four o'clock in the morning and I just hauled you in off my fire escape and what's going on?"

"I'm taking you to breakfast," he said.

"Where? Paris?"

"Darn, you went and guessed. It was supposed to be a surprise."

"What?"

"Well, strictly speaking, it won't be breakfast time in Paris when we get there, but we'll work something out."

"You've lost your mind."

"No, I think I found it, fixed it, and put it back in proportion with the rest of me... Kind of the same way you did."

"Oh..." Princess considered. "Well, I..."

"So, are you going to get dressed, or what? I owe Jason a drum of aviation fuel for his race car already."

"How's that?" Princess asked, bewildered.

"I got him to swing it with Amber's Cosmic Patrol Squadron that we could hop a ride on one of their transports. It leaves in an hour."

"Amber?"

"Well, yeah, Jason and Amber are dating... well.. maybe 'dating' isn't the most precise term for what they're doing, but, well, you know."

Princess found herself grinning.

"Mark, you're crazy... in the nicest possible way, you are completely and totally crazy."

"Like it?"

"Yes, I think I do."

"Then give me those flowers and I'll go downstairs and put 'em in something while you get dressed."

"Okay... and, Mark?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**NOTES:**

  1. Clarity of Vision is said to be one of the major qualities ascribed to Eagle Medicine in many traditions.
  2. ATP - Adenosine triphosphate, a chemical produced by mitochondria, microscopic organelles within the nuclei of our cells, which, in a very basic sense, is the fuel that allows our bodies to function. Normally, ATP is produced by a process known as "aerobic respiration," but when we exert ourselves and there isn't enough oxygen in the tissue to support sufficient aerobic respiration to meet our ATP requirement, our cells switch to a process called "anaerobic respiration." We can't keep anaerobic respiration going for too long, because it generates a toxic by-product called "lactic acid." This is one of the reasons we get cramps and aches and pains when we push our bodies beyond their accustomed limits.




	5. Epilogue

##  **Epilogue**

 

_Through your eyes I can see_   
_You have left your mark on me_   
_Skinwalker, skinwalker_

_\- Skinwalker (_ Robbie Robertson and the Red Road Ensemble _, Music for the Native Americans)_

 

Security Chief Anderson stood at the window of his Camp Parker office, watching his five charges frolicking outside: Jason was actually smiling as he, Tiny and Keyop faced off against Mark and Princess on the volleyball court. Mark was looking relaxed and happy, Princess almost radiant as they engaged in high-spirited horseplay.

"The team seems to be working particularly well together," Anderson observed. "Mark's attitude has improved and Princess is becoming positively assertive. I believe the two of them went parking last night." He permitted himself an indulgent smile. "Of course I don't know that officially. If I did, I'd have to do something about it, but as long as I'm not seen to find out, I think things will be fine."

"Are you surprised?" asked Coyote from the shadows of the armchair in the corner.

"I know I shouldn't be," Anderson said, "but you know me: plan for the worst, hope for something marginally better."

"Might be _you_ could use a little help," Coyote suggested, with a grin full of fangs.

"No, thank you," Anderson demurred. "Maybe we can talk after the war."

"I have time," Coyote said airily. "I have all the time in the Universe."

Anderson walked over to his desk, removed the whoopie cushion from his chair, defused the party popper booby trap from the drawers and carefully carried the basin of iced water away from his footrest.

"This appears to be the only, ah... unwelcome side effect of all your good work," Anderson said, tipping the iced water down the sink in the corner.

"Harmless pranks," Coyote said. "Nothing wrong with a few practical jokes."

"Indeed," Anderson said, as he returned to his desk. He gave his chair a cautious shove and watched as the armrests fell off.

"Kids," Coyote observed. "Let them have their fun."

"Oh, I intend to," Anderson said. "And speaking of fun... I have another, different assignment for you: let's talk about Zoltar..."

 


End file.
